By DAN LEVIN
Anger is rising over the government’s inability to protect the nation from pollution that has made places like the capital “unsuitable for human habitation,” as a prominent think tank stated this month in a study that was swiftly censored.
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Paulo Roberto de Almeida
In Beijing, Complaints About Smog Grow Louder and Retaliation Grows Swifter
By DAN LEVIN
Kim Kyung-Hoon/ReutersVisitors are silhouetted against thick smog at Jingshan Park near the Forbidden City in Beijing.
Nearly a week into northern China’s latest airpocalypse, the skies over Beijing are murky and acrid with a heavy smog that shrouds the sun. On social media sites, the yellow, choking air has become something of a meme, as residents post depressing photos of their blackened air purifier filters and hazy urban vistas with comments like #nuclearwinter.
Amid the latest round of smog, anger is rising over the Chinese government’s inability to protect the nation from a pollution crisis that has made places like Beijing “unsuitable for human habitation,” as a prominent state-backed think tank stated in a study released this month that was swiftly censored.
Last week, the official Sina Weibo microblog account of the state-run China Central Television Finance Channel posted two scathing indictments of the Chinese government’s environmental failures. “Does anyone still care about Beijing’s smog?” began one, noting that although the “pollution index is off the charts,” no measures had been taken to mitigate the environmental emergency. A few minutes later came the second post, “Beijing municipal government, don’t hide behind the thick smog,” which warned that “the people have grown numb,” but the channel was “issuing a wake-up call: the government can’t act blind.” It must “protect its territory and not act ignorant.”
Both posts were quickly deleted.
On Friday, after days of a growing outcry, the Beijing government for the first time raised the air pollution alert on its recently established color-coded system to orange, the second-highest level out of four, prompting schools to cancel outdoor activities and some factories to close and sending half the city’s cars off the roads. But those measures and similar ones taken across the region have failed to alleviate the smog. In Beijing by Tuesday evening, the United States Embassy air quality index meter read 500, nearly 20 times the level of particulate air matter deemed safe by the World Health Organization.
On Friday, after days of a growing outcry, the Beijing government for the first time raised the air pollution alert on its recently established color-coded system to orange, the second-highest level out of four, prompting schools to cancel outdoor activities and some factories to close and sending half the city’s cars off the roads. But those measures and similar ones taken across the region have failed to alleviate the smog. In Beijing by Tuesday evening, the United States Embassy air quality index meter read 500, nearly 20 times the level of particulate air matter deemed safe by the World Health Organization.
Even as the government insisted it was working overtime to address the crisis, officials were busy retaliating against CCTV. According to employees, an editor at the Finance Channel was fired for posting the offending microblog posts and CCTV was banned from all reporting on Beijing’s epic smog, because, they said, the posts infuriated the city’s mayor, Wang Anshun. Oddly, CCTV is still allowed to report on the air pollution hovering just outside the city’s borders in the surrounding province of Hebei.
Reached by phone, the director of the CCTV Finance Channel, Guo Zhenxi, said he was too busy to comment and hung up.
Censorship, however, is not preventing other Chinese in the polluted region from taking matters into their own hands. Last week, Li Guixin, a resident of Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital of Hebei, walked into the district court and filed a lawsuit against the city’s environmental protection bureau for failing to curb the increasingly horrendous smog. The lawsuit seeks 10,000 renminbi, or about $1,600, as compensation for the money he has spent on protecting himself against the foul air.
“Since last December, the smog in Shijiazhuang started to get worse,” Mr. Li told Yanzhao Metropolis Daily, a local newspaper. “I had to spend money on masks, an air purifier and a treadmill” for exercising indoors.
Mr. Li’s lawyer, Wu Yufen, said in a telephone interview that the lawsuit — the first of its kind in China — was rejected by both the provincial and the municipal courts. He is still waiting to hear from the district court, but vowed to pursue all legal recourse. “Air quality is a very important issue in our lives,” Mr. Wu said. “When the air is bad, there is no quality of life to speak of. You can’t even go outside.”
Back in Beijing, the authorities are taking a zero-tolerance approach to public expressions of environmental discontent. According to a Sina Weibo post published Tuesday morning, an artist named Du Xia was taken away by the police in central Beijing after he protested against the smog.
A few hours later, the post had disappeared, but the smog remained.
Mia Li contributed research.
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