When inhaled, these tiny pieces of pollution known as PM 2.5 can be severely harmful to health. One study estimated that air pollution caused 1.85 million deaths in China in 2019.
While unfavorable wind patterns and rainfall may be partially to blame, the rise was concentrated in areas of the country’s coal and heavy industry hubs, according to the group’s analysis of air quality readings alongside industrial and power generation data.
After decades of prioritizing the economy over the environment, public concern about the dangerous pollution became impossible to ignore around the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. Disclosure of air quality data by the United States Embassy and local activists eventually forced Chinese authorities to confront the smog that engulfed Chinese cities every winter.
In 2014, top officials launched a “war on pollution” that combined real-time monitoring with strict punishment for factories and local officials failing to make improvements. In its early years, the campaign was remarkably successful. In 2021, the average concentration of fine particulate matter was 40 percent lower than in 2013.
But in recent years the rate of progress has slowed and now stalled. Even after years of improvement, the average levels of air pollution nationwide remain five times above the World Health Organization guidelines.
The problem is the same one that makes China the world’s largest emitter of atmosphere-warming greenhouse gases: its economic reliance on coal-fired power and polluting heavy industries such as steel, aluminum and cement.
China’s huge network of coal mines, already responsible for more than half of global production, has churned out record volumes of the black rock this year in response to demands from Beijing to make sure the country has a stable supply of electricity.
China’s powerful leader, Xi Jinping, has said that the fossil fuel will remain the “mainstay” of the Chinese power system in the near term, even as the country installs massive amounts of wind, solar, hydro and nuclear power.
An obsession among policymakers about energy security has been worsened in recent years by power shortages exacerbated by heat waves and freezing winters causing spiking power demands.
After a cold snap plunged temperatures to record lows across northern China this month, electricity demand hit its highest ever daily level on Dec. 17, with 70 percent of supply for households being met by coal, Chinese state media reported.
In an apparent attempt to regain momentum in the fight against air pollution, China last month announced a plan to ensure that concentrations of fine particulate matter fall 10 percent nationwide and 20 percent in Beijing and its surroundings between 2020 and 2025.
Pei-Lin Wu and Vic Chiang in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed reporting.
