Analects

China

Pollution in China

Man-made and visible from space

Feb 1st 2012, 7:19 by The Economist online

“PM2.5” seems an odd and wonky term for the blogosphere to take up, but that is precisely what has happened in China in recent weeks. It refers to the smallest solid particles in the atmosphere—those less than 2.5 microns across. Such dust can get deep into people’s lungs; far deeper than that rated as PM10. Yet until recently China’s authorities have revealed measurements only for PM10. When people realised this, an online revolt broke out. Such was the public pressure that authorities caved in, and PM2.5 data are now being published for Beijing and a handful of other cities.

What of the rest of China? At the moment, only PM10 data are available. But the government’s hand may soon be forced here, too. Though pollution data are best collected near the ground, a plausible estimate may be made from the vantage-point of a satellite by measuring how much light is blocked by particles, and estimating from those particles’ chemical composition the likely distribution of their sizes. And a report prepared for The Economist by a team led by Angel Hsu of Yale University does just that, drawing on data from American satellites to map out PM2.5 pollution across the entire country.

World Health Organisation guidelines suggest that PM2.5 levels above ten micrograms per cubic metre are unsafe. The boffins have found (as the map shows) that almost every Chinese province has levels above that. Indeed, much of the country’s population endures air so foul that it registers above 30 on the PM2.5 scale, with Shandong and Henan provinces topping 50. Because these readings reflect the average pollution that a typical resident in a province is likely to endure during a given year, they underplay the sharp spikes in pollution that are seen on particularly dirty days, when spot readings go much higher. That is why Beijingers should take little comfort from the fact that the capital’s pollution measures only 35.  

This approach is not perfect. Satellites are not great at taking readings over bright surfaces like snow and deserts, and cannot easily distinguish particles high up in the atmosphere from those closer to the ground. And the data also have to be adjusted to take account of the fact that pollution and people tend to coincide. (Otherwise uninhabited areas would drag the figure down, below the average atmospheric conditions actually experienced by the people who live in any given province.)

Such caveats aside, however, this study shows how far China still needs to go in cleaning up its act. Pollution and development have always marched hand in hand, and may even be regarded as tolerable so long as they mark only a temporary blip on the road to prosperity. What is intolerable is that it takes outside intervention to lift the lid on what is happening.

Readers' comments

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oraclejason

development has to experience and endure the result,but i have to acknowlege that government of china is afraid to confront the problem,especially make populus known this.

小罗

I almost agree with the whole report, and it is the anti-intervention act or negligent supervision that make Chinese environment remain nearly the same level as before, in some areas, the environment may even get worse or deliberately ignored when the huge economic seduction appears with environmental protection at the same time.
however, what's happened as above is limited within the local gov.as we know, the environment policy-maker did their best to protect the more and more severe environmental issue while the local gov. officials had a short sight and seriously considered their political prospect from what they would do and achieve in the eco. field. they seldom take environment into their developmental schedule.it's intolerable and necessarily criticized.
whatever, I hope China's central GOV. can reinforce the implement of environmental protection policies and change the political assessment to the gov. officials so that the worsened situation can turn round as a whole.

Jon.

Personally, in my humble expert veiw, I think that Chinese should cut down on food itms that stimulate the production of meathane in their digestive tracts during its break-down, eg sprouts and scotch eggs

janjinpe

I hope the West can provide some technology to us.Than we can clean up our atmosphere.I don't think you will refuse it ,all right?

Edward W. Stanley in reply to janjinpe

I will reiterate. Electrostatic precipitators.
They have been available at the consumer level since the 1950's.
***Over 60 years ago!***
There is no need for the West to provide anything persay.
China makes and sells them.
Maybe their versions don't work very well or are not maintained or otherwise implemented properly.
... they come in all sizes and scales...
http://www.alibaba.com/countrysearch/CN/electrostatic-precipitators.html
This "advanced alien technology" was discovered in ****1824****.
I'm finding it unfathomable that this is even an issue today.
From the wikipedia article...
"The first use of corona discharge to remove particles from an aerosol was by Hohlfeld in 1824. However, it was not commercialized until almost a century later. In 1907 Dr. Frederick G. Cottrell applied for a patent on a device for charging particles and then collecting them through electrostatic attraction — the first electrostatic precipitator. He was then a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Cottrell first applied the device to the collection of sulfuric acid mist and lead oxide fume emitted from various acid-making and smelting activities."
Now that said, other issues might include that the Chinese versions may not remove enough of the particulate matter by design, and they need to feed the gases through liquid to remove the excess particulates post filtration.
Simply, there are solutions for problems. We need to change our focus from complaining about it or trying control others and instead just solve them.

rampzalig

Just for your info. Also in our infamous constituational democracies in Western Europe it is not that easy to find PM 2.5 values. The following an excerpt from a government report:

annual regional background concentrations range between 12 and 16 μg/m3. Urban background concentrations are found in the range of 16 to 18 μg/m3. Street increments – the added concentration due to traffic in streets – range between 2 and 6 μg/m3 for average traffic conditions and between 7 and 14 μg/m3 for very busy streets.

Which tells us that the reading may easily exceed 30 μg/m3 at the nearest Mac drive thru...

Angry Beaver

So, we no longer need to motivate the communists to set the Chinese people free, because they are simply killing them with pollution. I guess that that is another way of being free.

lemon tree in reply to Jon.

i recognized there are lots of Chinese people who are low quality,sometimes i can't even endure something they made,but it is not only the mistakes made by the ordinary people,a long time's history ,the need we should develop,the supervisor mode ,there are a lot of expects we need to improve and we want to do it ,but how to solve it in a minute??i love the countries which are developed sincerely ,but they also go through a period of time they developed,and they made pollution too.i konw there are a lots of faults in our development,but it is useless,many people don't know,and the

lemon tree in reply to Jon.

o ~~i found i make some mistakes in my reply ,forgive me ~~though i want to improve my english，O(∩_∩)O~ there are something i didn't say ————"about last reply" and the leaders ,some of they didn't make some changes for us ,i feel sorry...

di-mondz

What we need is for China to allow it's currency to float, stop cheating, then all the problems of the world will fix them selves.

1citizen

The coloured map has to show what the same techniques indicate in other places, not the subject of the study. Otherwise, the data can seem biased. For example, what hue of red is the ocean west of china, or mongolia and similar. More specifically, what colour do we see over the areas that have artifacts mentioned--snowy and desert areas. What does the situation look like in India or Japan?

guest-iljwwaw

where is Taiwan ???? you made a serious mistake....

angel of mercy

Some of the world's NIMBY businesses are located in China... what does one expect? It is important to consider what those same polluting industries belched out in their former homes. Mudslinging won't clean the air up any sooner now, will it?

Pten

So many different, (mostly) educated opinions (compared to other sources) on here is the beauty of the economist, reading them is more rewarding than its articles most of the time. It would be nice however if the debates that people had were a bit more logical and focused on the issues rather than personal attacks and generalisations.

nkab

Many know that China is shouldering the heavy burden of extra carbon emissions for China made goods consumed around the world, but few knew that as of 2011 China is already the nation with largest carbon reduction in the world, despite that China lags behind the US, Korea, Japan and North EU in environment control technology

It achieved this by closing off inefficient plants and by being relentless working to improve manufacturing efficiency across board. For example, all paper mills (I mean paper manufacturing) with annual capacity of 10 million tons or less will be closed by 2015, with similar stipulations for power hungry cement making, aluminum smattering, etc., etc.

Ironically, when China decided to close off some environmentally damaging mines for rare earth (China has about world's 50% of discovered reserve of rare earth, but supplies about 90% of world’s total output), something rich nations like the US and Japan had done closing years ago, these industrial nations have now filed complaints to WTO to force China to reopen these pollution prone mines.

Some level field of playing they'd still claim?

Edward W. Stanley

The technology to fix this problem has been around since the 50's... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrostatic_precipitator

aguilian in reply to PL123

Isn't pollution anti-baby ? I heard that pollution in China is not restricted to only babies. It is quite effective for grown up members too. If that doesn't work, there are always tanks.

PL123 in reply to aguilian

I know India use a better method to eliminate the pollution, starve them to death. Chinese use a friendly way, one-child-policy, and now Chinese people are even more advance to do it by free will, anti-baby-pill.

Human-being is the cause of pollution, war, environmental problem.... Indian has not yet learn about that.

Liveinhope

was caused by the release of methylmercury in the industrial wastewater from the Chisso ... Sea, which when eaten by the local populace resulted in mercury poisoning. ... The Minamata factory became the most advanced in all of Japan, both ... had jumped to 6000 tons per year and reached a peak of 45245 tons in 1960.
...
Sooner or later China?
and perhaps later India?

gorph

i live in zhengzhou,the biggest city of henna province ,the polution is so hard but people seem donot care anymore

Bismarck888

China is one of those countries that is well known layering opposing government policy one after the other. Its like a layer cake.

1) Pollution Control
2) Subsidizing Green Energy and Technology
3) Subsidizing green transport.

But on the other hand

1) Government provides heavily subsidies loans to build coal energy plants
2) Subsidizes Gasoline, thus encourging use.
3) Subsidize the car industry in the billions.

Alot of governments do this including the US, but the PRC takes the cake. Its like if there are two governments going in the opposite direction. Its like with their smoking policy. China subsidies the treatment of hundreds of people dying every year of smoking related illness, but PRC state owned companies are the largest suppliers of cancer sticks in the world. The first solution to something often is stop, but as usually the CPC even more so than most countries around the world need a reason to exist.

Bismarck888 in reply to PL123

Its not anti-Western propaganda when I say that all countries do that, but China is number one when it comes to those type of policies. The second is the US.

I did not bash China for polluting etc. All I said its like most governments that tend to introduce one policy yet a couple of months later introduce an opposing policy.

Bismarck888 in reply to PL123

In this regard it is. But you wouldn't care because you don't pay taxes in China. So alot of your comments are emotional. If you were to pay taxes in China you would question why the government like to have two sets of opposing policies.

aguilian in reply to Bismarck888

There are not two governments in China. There are many, even within Zhongnanhai. It is a constant struggle between factions. And most policies from Central are ignored if not opposed by the provinces, those from the provinces are ignored by cities and counties. And everyone has "solutions" to deal with "policies". "There are policies from above, and there are solutions from below."
And with the right amount of consideration, every police can be circumvented.

lesslunacy

A criticism of China is that they pirate propreity Pattented software. It is legal for the proprieter to put viruses in the copywrighted software that are triggered when the software is not registerred. China is country which is strong on labour engineer trained labour, but weak on specie green back holdings. Carma is better with public source code UNIX and OpenOffice is use, versus whiteHate hacker wars with Pattented Windows and Office respectively (must make mention of Paul Allen before I forget).

Justin Gass

Judging by the multiple atrociously written comments on this article, I'd wager that the Chinese government has a group of student minions whose sole purpose is to contradict and 'expose' any perceived criticism of their dirty country. It isn't xenophobic or racist to say that a country is polluted. All one has to do is (ahem) open their eyes and look out their windows in Beijing. Particulate matter and fog are two very different things, Chinamen.

H.S. in reply to Justin Gass

I am sure they do. However, reading comments like "Just keep your SARS and BIRD FLU and what ever biological disasters the pollution is creating to your selves, thank you." makes you wonder what website you are on.
Pollution is a problem in China but it's a problem that is connected with far more complex issues such as trying to lift 1.3bln people out of poverty. Or providing Europeans with affordable clothing, computers, mobile phones,... If we want everybody to be able to afford a plasma flat screen tv we should understand that this is not possible anymore if CN government starts imposing stricter anti-pollution laws. It's also up to us. At the end we decide what stuff we buy and where it comes from and we decide where we transfer our production lines to in order to avoid the cost of anti-pollution measures.

[Justin Gass February 4th, 04:17

Judging by the multiple atrociously written comments on this article, I'd wager that the Chinese government has a group of student minions whose sole purpose is to contradict and 'expose' any perceived criticism of their dirty country. It isn't xenophobic or racist to say that a country is polluted. All one has to do is (ahem) open their eyes and look out their windows in Beijing. Particulate matter and fog are two very different things, Chinamen.]

Why should you be surprised that there is a group of "student minions" since the CIA has its 1-dime army first?

Devil's

About Analects

In this blog, our correspondents provide insights into news about China. News is to be construed broadly; politics, finance, geography, language, fine art—all are fair game, in no particular order. We chose the name, which means "things gathered up" or "literary fragments" (and alludes to the title of a Confucian classic), to that end.

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