Pollution

The widening costs of China’s national smog problem

The high levels of air pollution recorded in Shanghai are damaging the economy, environment and public health
English

The multiple reports of smog in northern and eastern cities in recent weeks have been a reminder that air pollution is not just a problem for Beijing.

The pollution in Shanghai – which reached record levels last week – has been so bad that children and the elderly were advised to stay indoors, while factories were closed. Shanghai mayor Yang Xiong admitted that the city had bad air pollution, but claimed "it would be fine in the following days."

This has done little to dispel doubts about the efficacy of the measures being taken to tackle pollution. Huang Wei, who works on climate and energy issues for Greenpeace in Beijing, told Bloomberg that “the steps taken by the Shanghai government to alleviate pollution aren’t enough … smog brings a huge health risk to the public and definitely affects multinational companies’ investment decisions.”

Some of the criticism has had a wider scope. Wu Bihu, a professor at Peking University, told Reuters that "the smog crisis covering large parts of China has revealed the failure of the government’s development strategy of only going after GDP”.

The smog has also hit the economy, underlining the interpendence of China’s financial and environmental futures. As the air pollution levels worsened, there was a slump in Chinese equities, triggered by a dip in the share price of Yanzhou Coal Mining Company, China’s fourth-largest coal producer. Its share prices hit a three-week low over fears the government would intervene and reduce coal consumption. Bloomberg reported that China Eastern Airlines also plummeted to a two-week low.

However, perhaps the greatest concern for Chinese citizens is the impact air pollution might be having on their health. As Wang Xiangwei, editor of the South China Morning Post wrote, "What good is achieving Xi’s Chinese "dream of rejuvenation" if people cannot breathe the air or drink the water?"

A recent graphic from Greenpeace starkly depicts the link between PM 2.5 concentration and the risk of lung cancer.

 

-->
Cookies Settings

Dialogue Earth uses cookies to provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser. It allows us to recognise you when you return to Dialogue Earth and helps us to understand which sections of the website you find useful.

Required Cookies

Required Cookies should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

Dialogue Earth - Dialogue Earth is an independent organisation dedicated to promoting a common understanding of the world's urgent environmental challenges. Read our privacy policy.

Cloudflare - Cloudflare is a service used for the purposes of increasing the security and performance of web sites and services. Read Cloudflare's privacy policy and terms of service.

Functional Cookies

Dialogue Earth uses several functional cookies to collect anonymous information such as the number of site visitors and the most popular pages. Keeping these cookies enabled helps us to improve our website.

Google Analytics - The Google Analytics cookies are used to gather anonymous information about how you use our websites. We use this information to improve our sites and report on the reach of our content. Read Google's privacy policy and terms of service.

Advertising Cookies

This website uses the following additional cookies:

Google Inc. - Google operates Google Ads, Display & Video 360, and Google Ad Manager. These services allow advertisers to plan, execute and analyze marketing programs with greater ease and efficiency, while enabling publishers to maximize their returns from online advertising. Note that you may see cookies placed by Google for advertising, including the opt out cookie, under the Google.com or DoubleClick.net domains.

Twitter - Twitter is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest stories, ideas, opinions and news about what you find interesting. Simply find the accounts you find compelling and follow the conversations.

Facebook Inc. - Facebook is an online social networking service. China Dialogue aims to help guide our readers to content that they are interested in, so they can continue to read more of what they enjoy. If you are a social media user, then we are able to do this through a pixel provided by Facebook, which allows Facebook to place cookies on your web browser. For example, when a Facebook user returns to Facebook from our site, Facebook can identify them as part of a group of China Dialogue readers, and deliver them marketing messages from us, i.e. more of our content on biodiversity. Data that can be obtained through this is limited to the URL of the pages that have been visited and the limited information a browser might pass on, such as its IP address. In addition to the cookie controls that we mentioned above, if you are a Facebook user you can opt out by following this link.

Linkedin - LinkedIn is a business- and employment-oriented social networking service that operates via websites and mobile apps.