Beijing’s poor paying for blue skies
BEIJING — One year ago, China’s capital city was in the grip of suffocating and potentially fatal smog that made life a misery and breathing downright dangerous.
This month, the air in Beijing has been clear and the skies blue.
Favorable wind and weather have played a part, but this is no fluke.
Last year as a whole, Beijing recorded its largest improvement in air quality on record. The average concentration of tiny “PM2.5” particulates fell by more than 20 percent, according to Greenpeace East Asia.
In a mad dash to meet year-end air pollution targets and combat the traditional winter smog, 5,600 environmental inspectors were hired from around the country and dispatched into the industrial heartland surrounding the capital.
Tens of thousands of polluting factories were forced to clean up their operations or were simply closed, while millions of households were hurriedly shifted off coal-fired heating and onto natural gas.
There was a price: The factories that were closed had supported thousands of jobs. Millions living in the region surrounding Beijing lost their coal-fired heating without receiving gas heat to replace it and have suffered through freezing weather.
With that social price will inevitably come pressure to back off the clean-air policy. For now, though, the result represents a powerful show of political will that has upended a longstanding assumption — that the Communist Party would always put the economy ahead of the environment. It has raised expectations that the country could be turning the corner in addressing its infamous pollution problem.
“We need to recognize that a very important battle has been won,” said Ma Jun, founder of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing. “This could be a very important step towards finally winning the war.”
In 2013, in response to significant public anger, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang launched a “war on air pollution.” Then, spurred on by last winter’s “airpocalypse,” as it was colloquially known, Li issued another call to arms last March, vowing at the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress to “resolutely fight a good battle to defend blue skies.”
In 2014, Beijing’s mayor said he had made a “life and death” contract with the central government to reduce the city’s PM2.5 concentration to 60 micrograms per cubic meter from about 90 at the time. In late 2016, with the target apparently out of reach, he was replaced.
Even in recent months, few people would have thought Beijing would hit its target, said Li Shuo, a senior policy adviser with Greenpeace.
“There were so many actors involved, it was so difficult to get enforcement on the ground; it’s not only the energy sector, it’s heating, it’s iron and cement, it’s construction and transportation,” he said. “And who knows which direction the wind will blow?”
Against the odds, and with a little help from the wind, the target was met.
In Beijing, sales of face masks and air purifiers are reported to have fallen, as the number of “heavy pollution days” fell to 23 in 2017 from 58 in 2013. Partly thanks to the weather, PM2.5 levels in Beijing in the fourth quarter of last year were less than half what they were a year earlier, Greenpeace calculated. Schoolchildren, often kept inside during recess on bad days, were allowed to play outdoors more frequently.
But the measures have also been a doubleedged sword, or a clumsily wielded one.
As part of a “winter action plan” in the province of Hebei, which surrounds Beijing, inspectors recruited from other parts of the country were given a strong mandate and ended up competing among themselves to see how many offending factories they could close.
Huge numbers of small factories were shut down, while larger ones were forced to switch from coal to natural gas, and to use filters to clean their emissions. Major construction projects were halted, and coal-fired stoves in millions of homes were demolished. As millions of people shivered through freezing conditions and took to social media to express their anger, the government changed course in early December, relaxing its ban on coal.
The reversal came too late for restaurant owner Jiao Changguo, 47, in the village of Xijiao, whose coal stove was demolished two months ago. One lunchtime last week, his restaurant stood cold and empty. He has a gas cylinder and a patio-style heater, but it is too expensive to operate unless he has customers. And with all the glue factories in the neighborhood closed by the inspectors, he has very few customers.
“Since the environmental protection policy started, people’s income — well, there is simply no comparison with the past,” he said. “When it comes to the future, for ordinary people, especially in the villages, they can’t see any prospects.”