China to send air pollution inspection teams to provinces

Reuters: China's Environment Ministry said on Thursday it will send inspection teams to provinces and cities most seriously affected by smog to ensure rules on fighting air pollution are being enforced. Air quality in cities is of increasing concern to China's stability-obsessed leaders, anxious to douse potential unrest as a more affluent urban population turns against a growth-at-all-costs economic model that has poisoned much of the country's air, water and soil.

China's smog crisis was thrown back dramatically into the spotlight this week when Harbin, a frigid northeastern city of 11 million people, virtually ground to a halt when a pollution index showed airborne contaminants at around 50 times the levels recommended by the World Health Organisation.

 The problem was partly blamed on the government turning on the heating for the winter. Collective central heating, activated on a date set by the government, provides heat to 65 percent of Harbin, figures quoted last year in the state media show. Much of that heat comes from burning coal. Beijing's central heating normally comes on in mid-November.

China's government has announced many plans to fight pollution over the years but has made little obvious progress, especially in the country's north and northeast, where coal burning has driven the rapid growth in heavy industrial output.

Enforcing rules has been a particular problem with growth-obsessed local governments and powerful state-owned enterprises often ignoring central government guidelines and even falsifying their emissions data...

A smoggy sunset in Shanghai, shot by Suicup, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license