China's Environment Ministry said on
Thursday it will send inspection teams to provinces and cities most seriously
affected by smog to ensure rules on fighting air pollution are being enforced.
Air quality in cities is of increasing
concern to China's stability-obsessed leaders, anxious to douse potential
unrest as a more affluent urban population turns against a growth-at-all-costs
economic model that has poisoned much of the country's air, water and soil.
China's smog crisis was thrown back
dramatically into the spotlight this week when Harbin, a frigid northeastern
city of 11 million people, virtually ground to a halt when a pollution index
showed airborne contaminants at around 50 times the levels recommended by the
World Health Organisation.
The problem was partly blamed on the
government turning on the heating for the winter. Collective central heating,
activated on a date set by the government, provides heat to 65 percent of
Harbin, figures quoted last year in the state media show. Much of that heat
comes from burning coal. Beijing's central heating normally comes on in
mid-November.
China's government has announced many
plans to fight pollution over the years but has made little obvious progress,
especially in the country's north and northeast, where coal burning has driven
the rapid growth in heavy industrial output.
Enforcing rules has been a particular
problem with growth-obsessed local governments and powerful state-owned
enterprises often ignoring central government guidelines and even falsifying
their emissions data.
The Environment Ministry said on its
website (www.zhb.gov.cn) that teams would from now until March visit Beijing
and its surrounding regions, the Pearl and Yangtze River deltas, Chengdu,
Chongqing and Urumqi, all parts of China which have smog problems.
The teams will ensure that factories
have installed the correct equipment to cut emissions of sulphur dioxide, that
plants previously closed remain shut and that local governments are enforcing
clean air policies, the ministry added.
Factories that have particular problems
will have environment inspection teams permanently based on site and legal
means will be used to punish companies with particular problems, it said.
Regional environment inspection teams
who do not do their jobs properly will be prosecuted and the media will be used
to name and shame the most egregious examples of pollution, the ministry added.
The public will also be encouraged to
report pollution problems to the ministry, it said.
China published a detailed action plan
on tackling air pollution in September, saying it would cut coal consumption
and ban new industrial projects like power plants and steel mills in key cities
and regions such as Beijing and the Yangtze river delta.
Beijing, sometimes derided as
"Greyjing" or "Beige-jing" by English-speaking residents,
suffered its own smog emergency last winter when the pollution index reached 45
times the recommended level one particularly bad day in January.
Smoke from factories and heating plants,
winds from the Gobi Desert and fumes from millions of vehicles can combine to
blanket the city in a pungent shroud for days.
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