Beijing is facing its third air-pollution “crisis” of recent years and needs to crank up its efforts to cut emissions, a city environmental official said Monday, acknowledging a big metaphorical cloud hanging over the city.
Beijing faced air-quality crises in 1998 and ahead of the 2008 Olympics, and it now faces another that it needs to address by cutting emissions, Du Shaozhong, deputy head of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, said at a forum about how Chinese government offices can make use of microblogging services like the popular Sina Weibo.
Beijing’s air has improved significantly since 1998, but the city can still cut emissions from sources including automobiles, coal-burning, industry and dust, Mr. Du said. (Beijing has been notorious for its dust storms, fueled by an expanding desert farther west in China.)
Though Beijing’s skies have been fairly blue in the last few days, the recognition of a need for improvement might hearten residents of a city that is sometimes beset by darkness at noon. Mr. Du’s comments follow years of Chinese officials downplaying the soupiness of Beijing’s air. The inky dark clouds that loom over the city on too many days represent for many Beijingers the disconnect between official statements and the reality of life in China’s capital.
But Mr. Du didn’t elaborate on measures that Beijing may be planning, and he was dismissive of the idea that air-pollution readings released by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing could bring pressure on the government.
Mr. Du declined to say if he thinks Beijing should monitor and release data for smaller particulate matter in the air, as the U.S. embassy in Beijing does.
Authorities in Beijing and most other Chinese cities measure air pollution by counting only particles between 2.5 and 10 micrometers in diameter. But the U.S. embassy, which broadcasts readings from its own pollution-monitoring equipment through Twitter, counts particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers. Experts say those particles make up the most of the city’s air pollution and cause more damage to the lungs. While Twitter is blocked in China, third-party developers have used the embassy’s feed to build mobile apps that are accessible inside the country.
The embassy’s numbers have sparked much discussion online, including on Sina Weibo. That didn’t seem to faze Mr. Du, who praised Weibo as a good channel through which to hear public comments and to express personal opinions, and said improving Beijing’s air will in itself reduce public attention to pollution readings.
Mr. Du’s remarks—and his own use of Sina Weibo, where he has more than 111,000 followers —reflect how Beijing is working to use the Internet to its advantage, as a tool to help publicize government positions, even as it also ensures that sensitive content posted by normal Internet users content online is systematically censored.
Mr. Du said he isn’t worried that the U.S. embassy’s pollution readings could undermine Chinese citizens’ trust in their government. “Which pollutants we monitor is based on what is needed for preventing atmospheric pollution, not on what an embassy is doing,” Mr. Du said.
“Whether [citizens] trust the Chinese government, that depends on what things you are doing. I at least have self-confidence about that,” he said.
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