That’s right, it’s good news. When the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection went out and tested the air in the nation’s 74 major cities in June, it found that 19 of them met air quality standards on a daily basis. Sounds grim, but when the same tests were done in June last year, only 5 cities were up to scratch.
This is an encouraging improvement for a nation that is undergoing change on an unprecedented scale. Half a century ago, China was a nation of rural farmers, and largely closed off from the global economy. Now, its 1.3 billion people form the second largest economy in the world, China is known as “the world’s factory”, at least 40 of its cities contain a million people, and cities like Hong Kong and Shanghai are global financial centres. Unsurprisingly, a lot of this transformation has been noisy and dirty, and air quality has been one of the victims of this.
The Chinese Government is acutely aware of the problem, however. If a country uses up its natural resources and has air that is making its people sick, it’s hard for that country to be a long-term success. Last year the Government said that it would “declare war on pollution”, and there are big steps underway to move the country towards renewable energy, cut down coal consumption, and shut down industrial production that isn’t meeting minimum standards.
Another issue in China is corruption and inaccurate information coming out of local governments, and in April this year, the vice minister for environmental protection announced a two year campaign to crack down on fake or manipulated air quality data coming out of local and city governments.
Reforming China and its air quality is an incredibly big job. The sheer size of the place, the fact that there’s an ongoing migration of millions of people from towns to cities every year, and the fact that there are still millions of people working their way out of poverty in whatever way they can, means that it’s not as simple as unveiling a new set of rules like you might in the USA or Germany. But as the world’s largest population, the success or failure of the Chinese people to clean up and manage their environment will heavily determine the success of the planet at the very same task.
Handy China facts:
# China leads the world in renewable energy investment. In 2014 it spent $90 billion, leading the US at $52 billion, and Japan at $41 billion.
# China accounted for half of the world’s coal consumption in 2013.
# The fifth largest solar power plant in the world is China’s Longyanxia Dam Solar Park, with many more now under construction.
# China became the world’s biggest producer and consumer of energy in 2010, and will remain so for many years to come.
# The largest wind farm in the world is China’s Gansu wind farm, which is four times larger than the world’s second largest.
# China’s oil consumption quadrupled between 1993 and 2013.