Chinese curse: May you live in Chinese times

South Koreans Is Suing China For Polluting the Air Over Seoul
TIME

The sun rises over residential and commercial buildings in Seoul, South Korea, on Monday, March 13, 2017. 

China's appalling air quality isn't just sending the Chinese into despair. 

It's also badly affecting people in neighboring countries. 

That, at least, is the contention of a group of disgruntled South Koreans who on Wednesday launched a suit against the governments in Beijing and Seoul.
A total of 88 plaintiffs say they have suffered mental distress and are at risk of respiratory problems because of the fine dust that blows into South Korea from the western deserts of China, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reports.
Sandstorms from the Gobi Desert are a seasonal phenomenon in China, regularly affecting residents of the Chinese capital Beijing, where the dust particles mix with smog to send pollution readings off the charts.
The dust also makes it as far as Seoul, where it has sparked protests and the formation of a pressure group called Dust Out. 

However, while many South Koreans like to blame China for bad air, experts say the country's heavy reliance on coal-fired power plants and diesel fuel is a major part of the problem.
The plaintiffs, however, are undeterred. 

According to Yonhap, their petition accused China of failing "to control pollutants at an acceptable level," and had exposed South Koreans to "serious danger." 

They are seeking $2,600 each in compensation.

China Dream

Plagues of China

Dust storm chokes Beijing and northern China
BBC News

Beijing's skyline could barely be made out amid the dust on Thursday morning

A dust storm is choking a large swathe of northern China including the capital, Beijing, in yet another air quality crisis to affect the country.
Official air quality readings have soared well above the recommended World Health Organization (WHO) limit.
Authorities are advising residents to avoid outdoor activity and for children and elderly people to remain indoors.
The dust is blowing in from neighbouring Mongolia and China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Officials have advised that children and the elderly stay indoors

Beijing's environmental agency said that as of 11:00 local time (03:00 GMT), the PM2.5 reading -- which measures pollution in the form of small breathable particles -- was 500 micrograms per cubic metre.
The WHO says the maximum safe level should be 25 micrograms per cubic metre.
Authorities said Beijing would be affected until Thursday evening and visibility would be noticeably low throughout the day. 

Dozens of flights have been delayed or cancelled.

Officials say visibility in Beijing will drop noticeably on Thursday

State media quoted city officials as saying that the dust storm began moving towards Beijing in the late afternoon on Wednesday, and enveloped the city overnight.
The dust storm has also affected, to varying degrees, a vast swathe of northern China stretching from the far west province of Xinjiang to eastern Heilongjiang, with Inner Mongolia experiencing particularly bad conditions.

Beijing environmental authorities issued an advisory saying residents should avoid outdoor activity

Chinese people have, as usual, not hesitated to take to social media to vent their frustration.
"Sandstorm is hitting Beijing. I feel closer to lung cancer," said one commenter on microblogging network Sina Weibo.
Others made comparisons to the capital's infamous smog problem.
"I've got used to smog, time to try something new. If I have to choose one to live in, between sandstorm and smog, I prefer the former," said another Weibo commenter.
China has seen particularly intense air pollution in recent years, especially in winter as many of its northern cities still largely rely on burning coal for heating.
But it is also increasingly affected by dust storms, as its cities expand towards nearby deserts which in turn have been spreading due to climate change.

There were some tour groups at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on Thursday despite the bad air quality

Authorities have been attempting to halt this progress by planting more trees, besides other measures to cut pollution such as reforming the coal industry and shutting factories.
Beijing issued its first red alert, the highest level in air pollution alerts, in 2015, and has done so a few more times since.

Rogue Nation

Largest Polluter in the World Tries to Reduce Air Pollution by Controlling the News Related to Smog
By Danny Ovy

China Dream

Beijing has today an improved system of collecting data that are available to the public, but at the same time the authorities are very concerned about the spread of unauthorized data produced by popular mobile apps and people that are using handheld detectors to check the level of air pollution in the air that they breathe.
The Ministry of Environmental Protection in China (MEP), tries to create a modern regulatory system that is based on independent monitoring of the data, but the system could affect the ruling role of the Communist Party that wants to maintain social stability in the country.
The Chinese government is worried that the unauthorized sources of information on pollution levels could undermine the official data that are manipulated to show that the environment and the air quality is improving.
Origins Technology is the producer of the Laser Egg, which is a handheld pollution monitor sold in Beijing’s Apple store, and through the voice of its CEO, Liam Bates, says that the authorities are not against the people who are monitoring the quality of the air that they breathe, but are against the fact of making these data public.

Environmental Censorship on Air Pollution
So, we are talking about censorship here, the Chinese authorities don’t agree with the fact that the public is monitoring the quality of the air because these kinds of alternative data show that the official data are not accurate.
Actually, the Chinese government wants to hide the fact that they are not truly engaged in the fight against pollution because the developing economy requires huge amounts of cheap energy that can produce only by burning coal.
To block the unauthorized data, the authorities say that is illegal to publish data from non-official sources.
So, if you have a handheld monitor that can measure the level of pollution in your area, you can’t make public the data shown by your device because the tool used is not official. 

This is actually a censorship on the right to free expression, and is specific to the communist countries.
To understand the level of censorship in China, a citizen was recently detained by police for five days in Chengdu (southwest China) after posting on his Weibo microblog the announcement that “China is facing the heaviest smog in its 2,000-year history”. 

The authorities have called his action as “rumor mongering” made by individuals.
Regulators have named an air pollution monitoring app that spread rumors related to the fact that in December 2016, Chengdu was the third most polluted city in the world.
In reality, China tries to develop its economy up to the level of the western countries because only this way they can become a superpower in the world.
Sadly, their lust for world dominance affects the health of their citizens, and the entire world because the wind is moving the smog toward the neighboring countries.

China Dream

New Year goes dark in China
By Catherine Hardy

The Beijing city government has told officials not to set off fireworks or firecrackers to welcome the Lunar New Year.
The Chinese New Year holiday begins on New Year’s Eve on Friday.
It is normally marked by riotous pyrotechnic displays. 

They are thought to bring good luck and ward off evil spirits.

What has the government said?
The government has tried to limit the use of fireworks in recent years.
The government said officials must “take the lead by not setting off fireworks or firecrackers” in a statement late on Thursday.
“Pro-actively guide family members and friends not to let off or to limit the letting off of fireworks and firecrackers, improve air quality together and get into the action of ensuring blue skies for the capital,” the statement ended.
Other measures
The government has already limited firework sales in Beijing.
Only 511 firework stalls have been approved this year, compared to 719 last year.
None of them are in central Beijing, according to reports.

New Year in China
This year, the Lunar New Year marks the start of the year of the rooster.
It is the largest annual mass migration on Earth. 

Hundreds of mlllions of workers pack trains, buses, aircraft and boats to spend the festival with their families.
For many Chinese people, it is their only holiday of the year.

Are the restrictions only in Beijing?
No.
Other parts of the country are also cracking down.
Central Henan province has banned their use in all cities and towns.
Hebei’s Baoding city is threatening to detain anyone setting off fireworks outside the four days of celebrations.

Why is pollution a problem in China?
Efforts to clean up the skies in China’s northern industrial heartland, which includes Beijing, are being thwarted by coal-burning industry and indoor heating.
Both increase during the winter months, especially in the bitterly-cold north.

Plagues of China

Chinese human rights lawyers set their sights on smog

AFP

BEIJING -- Toxic smog has found itself in the dock in China, as the authorities are taken to court over a problem that has choked entire regions, put public health at risk and forced the closure of schools and roads.
At the helm is a group of human rights lawyers, who despite increasing government hostility to their work on some of China's most sensitive cases, say popular feeling is behind them when it comes to pollution that is literally off the charts.
"Chinese people aren't too concerned about societal problems and things that aren't happening to them personally, but this issue is different: everyone is a victim and is personally influenced by breathing polluted air," lawyer Yu Wensheng told AFP.
He is among a group of six lawyers who began filing their suits in December after a choking cloud of haze descended on China's northeast, affecting some 460 million people.
The campaign comes amid growing public anger over China's bad air, which has fuelled protests and spurred emigration among the wealthy.
Yu, who has defended prominent civil rights lawyers targeted by the government and people detained for supporting Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement, said the importance and impact of the pollution suit "far exceeds" his previous human rights cases.
Even acquaintances opposed to Yu's politics and police at a client's detention centre had expressed support, he said, noting it was "very unusual".
However, authorities are trying to muzzle online discussion on the issue and quell discontent by suppressing information on air quality.
In December, a week of thick haze forced cities across the northeast to go on "red alert" for nearly a week, closing schools, factories and construction sites and taking around half of vehicles off the roads.
As visibility dropped and airports cancelled hundreds of flights, people took to social media to vent their rage against a government that had long promised to solve the problem.
But comments about the heavy smog quickly began disappearing from the web.
On Wednesday, the Meteorological Administration also ordered local weather bureaus to stop issuing smog alerts, which authorities said was intended to improve coordination.
A document submitted by Yu's associate to the Beijing Second Intermediate People's Court accused the government of "severe dereliction of duty" in pollution management and sacrificing human health in pursuit of "toxic GDP growth" by turning a blind eye to the excessive emissions of local companies.
The lawyers have little hope of winning or even successfully filing their cases and are viewing the suits as "mostly symbolic", Yu said.
The document asked for authorities to publish an apology online and in the local state-run newspaper for a week, and hand over compensation of 65 yuan (S$13.50) for the price of his smog mask and 9,999 yuan for emotional damages.
He hopes the suits will help keep the issue in the public eye, adding he wants to inspire others to file complaints.
"Our main goal is to raise people's awareness of pollution and wake them up to how the government should bear responsibility for its inaction and ineffectual response," he said.
Notably, China can clear the skies for important occasions such as the 2014 APEC summit or the 2008 Olympics, but does so selectively due to the high economic cost.
"They can do it, but they do not," Yu said.
Another lawyer Ma Wei, who is suing the city of Tianjin, said he has received no official response even weeks after the court was legally required to issue one.
Instead, the public security bureau and other authorities have tried to pressure him to retract his suit.
"I refused and told them, 'I'm doing this so that you can breathe clean air, too,'" he said.
The lawyers are used to harassment. 

Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, the country has cracked down on civil rights defenders.
Though the government initially targeted political activists and human rights campaigners, it has increasingly turned its attention to the legal professionals who represent them.
In 2014, authorities imprisoned and tortured Yu for 99 days for allegedly "disturbing public order".
Still, he is not afraid.
"We are lawyers," he said, "but also first and foremost citizens and smog victims ourselves."
"If we do things according to the law and still get detained," he added, "it will be just the thing to show people the true nature of our so-called 'rule of law'."

China Dream: Information Manipulation

China is desperately trying to control what information the public can get about pollution
By Echo Huang

Keep your mouth shut.

After a toxic start to the year, China is taking measures that will make it harder for people to get information about pollution.

Notice on halting smog forecast, issued by China Meteorological Administration on Jan. 17, 2017.

On Jan. 17, China’s Meteorological Administration issued a notice (link in Chinese) requiring all local weather bureaus to stop issuing smog warnings. 

Instead, it will implement a unified system for future smog warnings.
Under this new system, the agency said it will issue warnings after discussions with the environmental bureau, weather forecast bureau, and other related departments, a staff member told Shanghai-based news agency the Paper (link in Chinese).
Local weather bureaus, however, will still be able to issue “fog” warnings. 

Fog has become a bit of a scapegoat for China when it comes to pollution. 

Earlier this month, Beijing blamed its poor visibility on fog, issuing its first-ever red “fog” alert while maintaining an orange smog alert—its second-highest pollution warning—even though independent pollution readings qualified it for a red smog alert.
Chinese citizens are livid about the changes. 

“As professional weather forecast departments, they should be well aware of the risks it bring if the smog isn’t alerted when it comes,” one user wrote on Weibo (link in Chinese).
The notice comes weeks after a Chinese app called Air Matters, which collects air quality information, was told by the government to stop releasing data exceeding official records. 

One of the app’s developers Wang Jun said a provincial environmental protection department ordered the app to cap its air quality index readings at 500, the current maximum (link in Chinese) recorded by officials.

Plagues of China

In China, Pollution Fears Are Both Literal And Metaphorical
JEFFREY WASSERSTROM, BENJAMIN VAN ROOIJ

Face masks were placed on stone monkeys at the Beijing Zoo on Dec. 19 to protest heavy air pollution in northeast China. A week earlier, riot police cracked down after artists put similar masks on human figures in Chengdu.

Last month, as China encountered some of its worst pollution yet, artists in Chengdu did something bold: They put smog-filtering cotton masks over the faces of statues representing ordinary urbanites that dot a centrally located shopping street.
This small-scale act of protest triggered a big response. 

Riot police moved in to prevent anti-pollution gatherings in this inland city, and stayed in place for days. 

Protesters were arrested. 

A man was detained for spreading rumors.
How different things were a decade ago, in the coastal city of Xiamen. 

Throngs of people blocked central streets in an organized protest against a proposed factory, which local residents feared would pose health risks. 

Back then, the government did not arrest the protesters and actually gave in to their main demand.

It re-evaluated the project after a period of public consultation and open debate. 

The plan to build the factory in Xiamen was scrapped.
The independent-minded Southern Weekly, China's prime intellectual newspaper, named Xiamen's citizens "person of the year" and praised the protests in a story headlined "With Courage and Ideals, They Light Up Our Future."
This was no isolated event. 

In other cities, similar big not-in-my-backyard struggles blocked development projects. 

In most cases, while movement leaders were eventually punished, the protests were allowed to run their course, local governments often acceded to participants' immediate demands and there were relatively few arrests.

Chinese men wearing masks walk on a bridge near a building shrouded by fog and pollution in Beijing on Jan. 5. China has long faced some of the worst air pollution in the world, blamed on its reliance on coal and older, less efficient cars. Inadequate controls on industry and lax enforcement of standards have worsened the problem.

What made the authorities so worried about December's small-scale Chengdu event? 

Why the swifter, more draconian reaction than 10 years ago?
As China specialists who track environmental issues and protest, respectively, we see two things as particularly worth noting.
The first is simply the passage of time. 

At the start of 2007, the year of the Xiamen demonstrations, China was an authoritarian country but one that was moving, albeit very gradually and sometimes glacially, toward becoming more open.
As 2017 starts, by contrast, China is a country heading the other way — especially since Xi Jinping's rise.
From year to year, rights lawyers in China have less room to maneuver, not more. 

The authorities have been ramping up censorship and tightening the reins on envelope-pushing publications, including Southern Weekly. 

Some infractions that vexed authorities in the past but were allowed to go on can no longer occur.
The authorities have also been issuing more warnings lately about the need to protect the Chinese body politic from destabilizing political ideas, which a Communist Youth League website likened to a "zombie virus" of the sort portrayed in horror films, delivering "chaos" to the "infected" society. 

This brings to mind official drives decades ago against what was tellingly described in China as "spiritual pollution."

Contagion fears
The other thing to keep in mind when considering the protest and response in Chengdu is the way both top-down and bottom-up fears of contagion shape politics in today's China. 

Despite — and sometimes because of — how China has been rising, the country has stayed a jittery place due to anxieties about the potential damage that can be done by the spread of things seen as dangerous.
Top-down contagion fears stem from the leadership's sense, initially triggered by events such as the 1989 collapse of communist governments in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union's implosion, that the party-state's endurance is precarious. 

As striking as its longevity is, those in charge feel that constant vigilance is necessary to guard against two possibilities.
One top-down contagion scenario is of a fast-spreading domestic movement, similar to those that have upended governments at various points in China's past. 

The other, which undergirds the effort to stem the flow of imported ideas, is of a Chinese counterpart to a "color revolution" like those seen in some post-Soviet states.
Bottom-up contagion fears can drive very different sorts of protests, whose common denominator is anxiety about dangerous substances — like air pollution — moving from one place to another. 

When the focus is on a limited geographical area, the government often lets things run their course. When the potential reach of a struggle is broader, this bottom-up contagion fear links to the top-down worry about movements that spread widely. 

And the result is more likely to be swift repression.
This brings us back to Chengdu. 

A seemingly mild expression of discontent, the artists' action nevertheless tapped into widespread anxieties. 

The masking of statues had a much more encompassing — and thus threatening — implication than the single location-focused NIMBY marches of the past: that no one is safe from toxic air. 

It had the potential to resonate with just about everyone in China.

The spread of viral tactics
The simplicity of using smog masks to express this point was also important, especially in a country where cotton face filters are cheap and sold everywhere. 

It was easy for officials to imagine — especially with memories fresh of how powerful the ubiquitous umbrella became as a symbol of protest in Hong Kong in 2014 — the Chengdu act stimulating copycat actions across China.
Far from Chengdu, people could soon use smog masks to signal that they've had enough of the polluted air and have lost patience with the leadership for failing over decades to tackle it. 

Memes and symbolically charged poems about pollution can go viral — so why not tactics?
Mao Zedong famously wrote of the ease with which a "single spark" can start a wildfire. 

In more recent memory, the student protest wave of 1989 started on campuses in Beijing, spread throughout the city and encompassed workers and intellectuals alike. 

It culminated in a movement that rocked scores of urban areas.
And in 1999, Chinese leaders were completely surprised when they discovered that a religious sect called Falun Gong had been able to amass supporters completely under their radar. 

The extent of the spread of what the authorities saw as a particularly dangerous sort of contagion — due partly to the group's admiration for a charismatic leader — surfaced when Falun Gong organized a blockade with 10,000 followers right in the center of Beijing, where all top-level leaders live.
These are instances of contagious activism that China's leaders dread. 

The lesson is clear in the minds of those on top: Keep discontent at bay; keep it centered on local issues; keep it from spreading.

Xi's risky strategy
And so we have a party-state that fears artists placing smog masks on statues. 

It is a party-state that has been trying to address pollution, knowing this a major source of public discontent. 

And it is a party-state that understands it needs the public to help its regulation of polluting factories, especially to help put pressure on local governments who have protected smog-producing industry.
The party-state walks a tightrope, balancing the need to give sufficient space to citizens to help counter pollution with the compulsion to tightly control any sort of activism that could undermine its power.
As Xi has squeezed the space for public expressions of discontent and participation, pollution continues to worsen. 

Rather than courageously waging a real war on smog, enlisting all citizens in the fight, Xi is betting on the risky strategy of restricting even the smallest-scale actions — even, ironically, as he takes a higher profile symbolic role in the global climate change fight.
If, in the end, his administration fails to reduce pollution, Chinese citizens will rightly be angry about their situation at home, no matter what China's leaders are saying and doing in the global arena. These citizens may get bolder and bolder in pushing back against restrictions that keep them in dangerously polluted villages and cities without any effective means of resistance.

China dream: Beijing, the city where you can't escape smog

China's capital is notorious for its chronic pollution. Even indoors it's a struggle to find clean air.
By John Sudworth.

A normal day in Beijing
Having already taped most of my windows shut, I have now started on the air conditioning vents. 

The aim is simple -- to close off every access point through which the toxic outside air leaks into our Beijing home.
Even our double-glazing doesn't keep out the smog. 

The most dangerous constituent, particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter -- or PM2.5 as it's known -- finds a way through the tiniest of gaps where the windows close.
So the only solution there is duct tape.
It's like a re-enactment of a 1970s government information film on surviving a nuclear holocaust. 

Only it's not radiation we're trying to keep at bay, but the fallout from fossil fuels.
The most useful device in our armoury is our PM2.5 monitor. 

We have two, one upstairs and one downstairs, which we glance at frequently, and it was their arrival that prompted the frenzy of taping and draught-excluding that continues to this day.
When I first arrived in China, five years ago, there was no way of monitoring the quality of air in our home. 

Like everyone else, we left it to blind faith that our air purifiers were doing the trick. It now transpires they weren't. 

Even now on highly polluted days, we struggle to get our PM2.5 count much below 25 micrograms per cubic meter, the World Health Organization's maximum standard for safe air.
And that's with multiple purifiers running at full tilt, large box-like machines that sit in the corner of every room -- two in some -- the combined noise output of which is akin to living in the engine room of an aircraft carrier.

Shoppers look at air purifiers in Beijing
China's air pollution problem is now so bad that its effects are measured in more than a million premature deaths a year and markedly reduced life expectancy -- an average of more than five years or so -- in the worst-affected regions.
Over the past few weeks, a period of particularly acute and prolonged air pollution, the average air quality in Beijing has been well above 200 micrograms of PM2.5 particles per cubic metre -- many times the maximum safe limit.
During the worst of it, it's been like living under house arrest, our children confined to the small, deafening but breathable indoor space of our home for days on end.
And across China, the smog becomes a dominant topic on social media, with the population tracking the foulness of the air via mobile phone apps.
One group of Beijing mothers, armed with their own PM2.5 counters, have even been roaming the city in search of shopping malls or cafes with filtered air -- and then sharing their discoveries online.
Of course, humanity's dependence on oil and coal long predate China's economic rise. 

But China offers a vision of environmental degradation far in excess of the pea-souper fogs of 1950s London or Manchester.
For much of the past month the cloud of toxic air hanging over this country has extended for thousands of miles, a giant, continent-sized cocktail of soot from coal fired power stations and car exhausts, smothering the lives and filling the lungs of hundreds of millions of people.
While growing awareness means that more of them are now taking action to protect their health, many others are either not fully informed about the danger or don't have the means to do much about it.
A set of new filters for a single air purifier can cost £100 ($120) or more and needs changing every six months or so.
It is, of course, not a problem only of China's making. 

The smartphones, computers, TV screens, jeans and shoes that have been pouring out of its factories over the past few decades are cheap, in part at least, precisely because they're made without environmental safeguards.
The interests of the rich world and an unaccountable Chinese Communist elite have neatly dovetailed. 

The West gets its cheap consumer desirables and China gets rich without the inconvenience of the independent scrutiny, regulation or democratic oversight of other markets.
The true cost is measured by the numbers on my pollution monitors, and it is one being borne disproportionately by ordinary Chinese people.
Following a crackdown on a rare protest against pollution in the central city of Chengdu recently, one blogger dared to speak out in favour of the protesters. 

The police, he suggested, should bear in mind that the elites, whose interests they protect, have sent their families to breathe clean air overseas.
He was promptly detained.

Poetoxic Beijing

China Dream: Death By Smog

Read The Smog-Inspired Poem That China Can't Stop Talking About
By EMILY FENG

A smog alert day in Dalian, China. The photo was taken on December 19.

A poem written by a Chinese surgeon lamenting the medical effects of smog, called "I Long to Be King," is going viral on Chinese social media.
Told from the perspective of lung cancer, the poem takes an apocalyptic note:

Happiness after sorrow, rainbow after rain.

I faced surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy,

But continued to chase my dream,

Some would have given up, but I will be the king.

An English version of the poem (for full text, see below) ran in the October issue of CHEST Journal, a publication of the American College of Chest Physicians.
Published in Chinese this month, the poem is now striking a chord on Chinese social media.
"I hope the government can look at this problem more and then immediately resolve it, otherwise everyone will move. Or we will die of cancer. Is this the final outcome we face?" asked one commenter on Weibo, China's Twitter-like social media platform.
"I'm infuriated... For the sake of GDP, can we simply ignore the health of our country's people?" wrote another.
Not all commenters appreciated the poem though.
"Europe and the U.S. always most enjoy when Chinese people write about their own underside. The more coarse, the more backward, the higher the chance it wins attention," complained one.
The author of "I Long to Be King" is Dr. Zhao Xiaogang, deputy chief of thoracic surgery at Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital of Tongji University.
Since the poem has taken off, he has been outspoken in the detrimental health effects of air pollution.
"The intense rise in lung cancer ... is intimately related to smog," Dr. Zhao told state media.
In and around Beijing and Hebei province in China's northeast last week, the concentration of air pollutant particles was more than 20 times higher than the level deemed safe by the World Health Organization.
According to the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, the city saw 168 days of "polluted" air in 2016.
Cancer is the leading cause of death in China, claiming 2.8 million lives in 2015.
Lung cancer is the country's leading form of cancer.

The Chinese government, well aware of the simmering discontent, has resolved to clean up the country's smog problem.
Ambitious goals have been set to substantially reign in air pollution by 2020.
And over the past year authorities have fined corporate polluters millions, going as far as detaining several hundred of them.
Yet on Chinese message boards, some commenters don't think the pollution will end any time soon.
"The Hebei countryside is all smog. It is terrible," wrote one commenter.
"It is another way of showing how useless the government is."
Here's the full text of I Long To Be King:

I am ground glass opacity (GGO) in the lung,

A vague figure shrouded in mystery and strangeness,

Like looking at the moon through clouds,

Like seeing beautiful flowers in the fog.

I long to be king,

With my fellows swimming in every vessel.

My people crawl in your organs and body,

Holding the rights for life or death, I tremble with excitement.

When young you called me "atypical adenomatous hyperplasia",

Then when I had matured, you declared me "adenocarcinoma in situ",

When fully developed, your fearful denomination: "invasive adenocarcinoma".

You forgot my strenuous journey to become the king.

From tiny to strong,

From humble to arrogant.

None cared when I was young,

But all fear me we when full grown.

I've been nourished on the delicious mist and haze,

That sweetly warmed my heart,

Always loving when you were heavy drunk and smoking,

Creating me a cozy home.

When I was less than eight millimeters, I was so fragile,

Waiting for a chance to grow up.

Now, more than eight millimeters, I am more mature,

And considered worthy of notice.

My continuous growth gives me a chance to be king,

As I break through layers of obstacles,

Spanning the mountains and waters.

My fellows march to every corner and occupy every region.

My quest to become king was full of obstacles,

I was cut until almost dead in childhood,

Burned once I'd matured,

And poisoned when older.

Happiness after sorrow, rainbow after rain.

I faced surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy,

But continued to chase my dream,

Some would have given up, but I will be the king.

I long to be king, with fellows and subordinates,

I long to be king, to have people's fear and respect

I long to be king, to dominate my domain,

I long to be king, to direct your fate.

China Dream

The filth they breathe in China
By Michael Auslin

Winter has returned to northern China.
And so has the country's trademark, deadly smog.
The central government recently declared its first-ever national red alert for air quality, with pollution levels hovering over 12 times the level recommended by the World Health Organization.
Indeed, China's unprecedented growth has come at a horrific social cost that is just beginning to get serious attention.
The political leadership of China put economic growth far above environmental protection or health concerns, and the country now faces a catastrophically polluted countryside.
Nearly all aspects of China's environment are affected, and the true economic and health effects are only now becoming apparent.
Pollution in China is at an unsustainable level.
The cost in lives and the cost of cleaning up China's ruined rivers, lakes, skies, and soil are staggering.
Just as significant will be the economic cost of changing the way business is done in China to prevent further environmental destruction.
The lack of industrial regulation, the burning of dirty coal, and the rapid growth in private ownership of cars have combined to create one of the world's worst air pollution problems.
On one of my first trips to Beijing, as our plane touched down in the early afternoon, the sky looked as though it was dusk, a phenomenon universally noted by visitors.
The rarity of sunny and blue sky is avidly remarked on by everyone from shopkeepers to government officials — the latter, of course, off the record.
By some estimates, only 1 percent of China's urban dwellers breathe safe air. 
During the winter of 2012–13, levels of the most dangerous type of particulate matter in Beijing's air were over 20 times the amount recommended by the World Health Organization.
Midday in Beijing looked like late evening, and residents were urged to stay inside.
The massive scale of China's air pollution problem was dramatically exposed when Beijing was cleared of over one million automobiles for nearly a month before the start of the 2008 Olympic Games, creating a stretch of clear weather not seen in over a decade.
In October 2013, the city of Harbin in northeastern China, home to 11 million people, was essentially shut down for over a day because of smog that measured 50 times worse than the daily limit set by the World Health Organization.
China's dark skies impose staggering demographic costs.
As early as the 1990s, respiratory disease was identified as one of the country's leading causes of death.
Chinese environmental activists claim that in the most polluted cities, such as Guangzhou, residents' lungs turn black by the time they are in their forties.
A 2007 World Bank study claimed that outdoor air pollution causes up to 400,000 premature deaths each year, and polluted air inside homes and factories causes another 300,000. 
A more recent study put the total number of deaths caused by air pollution at 1.2 million annually. 
A 2013 study estimated that people in northern China have a nearly six-year drop in life expectancy due to pollution.
Nor do China's citizens find much help in the ground.
The water may be even worse than the air.
Most of the country's water sources, from lakes to rivers, streams, and catch basins, are hazardous to human health. 
Industrial runoff, poor sewage treatment, and lack of adequate waste disposal locations, particularly throughout China's interior, have poisoned the country's water sources.
Environmental groups such as Greenpeace accuse industrial concerns of dumping poisonous chemicals and other waste into rivers and lakes in and near cities. 
In March 2013, over 3,000 dead pigs floated down a major river through Shanghai, leading to widespread fears of waterborne contamination from the carcasses.
Some rivers are so polluted that the fish in them have died, yet local populations still use them for washing clothes.
The World Bank concluded in 2007 that 60,000 deaths occur each year from diarrhea, cancer, and other diseases caused by waterborne pollution.
One nonprofit environmental group claimed in a 2011 study that 39 percent of China's seven main river basins were too polluted for general use, including 14 percent that were unfit even for industrial use.
In 26 key lakes and reservoirs, only 42 percent of the total water was deemed fit for swimming and fishing, while 8 percent was unfit even for industrial use.
The World Bank estimates that the groundwater in half of China's cities is dangerously polluted. 
That means that at least half of China's population lacks access to safe drinking water.
In all, a quarter of China's water sources are too polluted for human use.
The problem is growing despite government attempts to improve water quality.
All this pollution is taking an enormous toll on China's citizens and its economy.
The World Bank estimated that the health effects of pollution cost China's economy upward of $100 billion per year, or 3 percent of GDP.
Overall, as millions of Chinese continue to move to the cities, air quality worsens and local sanitation systems get overwhelmed, while back in the hinterlands, factories go on destroying lakes and rivers. Modernization clearly does not mean wealth for everyone in China, nor, despite the trappings of middle-income lifestyles, does it necessarily mean a healthier standard of living.

Plagues of China

Don’t Blame the Weather For China’s Smog
By Junfeng "Jim" Zhang

Like a Chinese dream

China’s air quality has been particularly bad so far this winter. 

Severe smog or haze episodes have occurred one after another with short breaks in between, affecting many parts of the world’s second largest economy, including some remote cities in the far west East Turkestan

Northern China has been hit hardest, with much of the national and international attention focusing in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

Last week, Beijing issued its first-ever red alert for “fog” due to extremely low visibility caused by haze. 

The warning is the most severe pollution warning in the country’s four-tier system, resulting in school closures and flight cancellations and delays.
Haze and PM2.5 are perhaps the most commonly used words in China nowadays. PM2.5 is a term for tiny particles that can cause respiratory, cardiovascular, reproductive, and other health problems. High concentrations of agglomerated fine particles in the atmosphere are directly translated to decreased visibility or grey-ish sky. 

Hence, China counts the number of blue-sky days per year to assess progress made toward improved air quality.
Since Li Keqiang declared a war on air pollution in 2014, the Chinese Government released a set of aggressive air quality control regulations that aimed to reduce PM2.5 by 20% in five years. 

Annual average concentrations of PM2.5 have declined in the last three years. 

And this past summer, Beijing and other cities in China had more “blue sky” days than previous years. 

China’s government was pleased to see the effectiveness of its stricter emission standards on power plants and industrial facilities, but that sentiment quickly changed when a series of negative reports of haze emerged in the Fall of 2016.
It is, of course, convenient to blame the weather. 

No one knows better than Beijing residents about the importance of having northerly wind or a good rain to clean a sky filled with PM2.5 and gaseous pollutants. 

It is true that the atmospheric condition, with less precipitation and wind, is less favorable for pollutant dispersion in the winter than in the summer in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hubei region. 

This is an important contributor to worsened air quality in winter months in this region. 

However, this factor alone does not explain the frequent reoccurrence and very wide spread of haze episodes across China. 

Blaming weather for the problem may exasperate an already angry audience who might consider this an irresponsible excuse to the real cause of the problem.
The reality is that new regulations to curb pollution aren’t enough, and the latest alert signals that China’s government needs to do more. 

The January 4th 2017 issue of Economist presented data showing a hike in production output of crude steel, cement, and coke in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in the second half of 2016 compared to the same time period in 2015. 

The question remains whether the more stringent emission controls of these large industrial facilities are enough to offset the emissions resulting from increased industrial production.
As China’s economy grows in tandem with growing demands for energy, coal is still unfortunately the principal fuel for keeping homes and buildings warm in many parts of China beyond Beijing. Small-scale coal boilers and residential coal stoves in general have very poor combustion efficiency, emitting PM2.5, carbon monoxide, and other pollutants into the atmosphere, which can be visually seen as soot-laden smoke. 

These numerous and individually-owned combustion devices are hard to regulate for their emissions. In addition, as China continues to experience growth in both the number of privately-owned automobiles, there is every reason to believe that vehicular emissions have contributed to the air pollution problem as resident drive more.
Qualifying contributions of various sources to each haze episode has never been easy. 

While scientists are busy figuring out how water vapours from combustion sources, including natural gas and petroleum combustions, enhance the formation of PM2.5 and how emission-altered climate and weather conditions can in turn affect air quality, the message for policy actions is clear. 

It is a burning issue! 

Burning coal and other fossil fuels is the origin of the problem. 

There is a limit on how far today’s technology can go in terms of reducing emissions from coal. Without a significant reduction in coal consumption, especially when atmospheric conditions are unfavourable for pollutant dispersion, it would not be possible to see blue skies.
Although China has been increasingly investing in the production of renewable energy and cleaner energy, this winter’s severe haze problem sends a strong signal that the pace for replacing dirty energy is not fast enough. 

If all the efforts were targeted to large industrial facilities while leaving numerous small sources unchecked, one could only just sit and wait for mother nature’s power to blow away or wash out the dirty stuff pumped into the atmosphere by burning dirty fuels. 

China’s haze is truly a burning “burning issue.” 

Every effort should be made to reduce the burning of dirty fuels.

Plague of China: Airpocalypse

China Deletes Online Criticism of Toxic Smog Choking Its Cities
By Yang Fan and Lin Ping

As northern China entered its second day on red alert for toxic smog, online censors moved to delete content criticizing the ruling Chinese Communist Party for its handling of the air pollution crisis that grips the country every winter.
Calls have been growing on social media to pin down the government departments responsible for the various factors contributing the toxic brown soup that hundreds of millions of people are forced to breathe in Chinese cities.
"The State Council must make a formal statement to the 1.4 Chinese people explaining itself," one commentator wrote, calling for "formal plans" to tackle the problem within the next decade.
"People understand that the water can support the boat, but that it can also sink it," the article warned, in a metaphor referring to the ruling party and the people.
The post was rapidly deleted from social media sites and the popular smartphone chat app WeChat.
References and links to a Financial Times article in Chinese by outspoken Beijing University law professor Zhang Qianfan, titled "Can China find its way out of its systemic smog?" were also apparently targeted by censors, returning messages indicating a "violation of content regulations" on Friday.

No real plan
Beijing resident Guo Guijun said the deletion of online content about the smog showed the authorities have no real plan to tackle the problem.
"If they are even going to delete content that is public knowledge, then I think they lack the courage to face up to the situation," Guo said.
"The facts are the facts ... and avoiding the issue isn't going to solve anything."
She said many people in Beijing are feeling a sense of despair in the face of the smog.
"I'm from Beijing; I don't have anywhere else I could go," Guo said.
"For me, there's no escape."
"We need a leader who is willing to take responsibility and be accountable to the people, because everyone wants this problem to get fixed," she said.

Help for schools
Meanwhile, the Beijing government said it would help finance air purification systems in the city's schools to protect children's health.
Beijing's municipal government education bureau called on district governments to move ahead with purification systems as part of a pilot scheme that could soon be rolled out citywide, official media reported on Friday.
The city government will allocate money to help schools cover the costs, the Global Times newspaper, which has close ties to the ruling Chinese Communist Party, reported.
It said kindergartens and primary and middle schools in Dongcheng, Xicheng, Chaoyang, Haidian, and Fengtai districts have already installed such devices, with financial support from the government, enterprises, and parents.
Earlier this week, a middle school affiliated with the prestigious Tsinghua University installed the first batch of air filtration devices in 11 classrooms, and will soon install them in all classrooms, the paper said.

Beyond hazardous
Many northern Chinese cities have seen hazardous levels of air pollution, with some measuring far beyond the "hazardous" level of 500 on air quality indices in recent days.
As of 3.00 p.m. local time on Friday, the northern oil city of Daqing saw an AQI level of 999, Quartz news reported after monitoring the online Real-time Air Quality Index, which tracks air pollution readings in cities around the world.
The smog also appeared to be drifting south on Friday.
The provincial meteorological bureau in the southern province of Guangdong issued a warning of "moderate to severe" air pollution for Friday and Saturday in the Pearl River Delta region.
In Hong Kong, where downtown areas logged air quality readings at an "unhealthy" 152 in some busy areas on Friday, government officials said air pollution in the city had showed a marginal improvement in some areas during 2016.
Air quality official Mok Wai-chuen said the city had recently adopted the World Health Organization (WHO) target for nitrogen dioxide into its air quality objectives, which he described as "very strict."
"We have been able to achieve the short-term objectives for the general air monitoring stations, but not for the roadside stations," he said of the pollutant, which is linked to exhaust fumes from diesel vehicles.