Poisonous smog in China. Beijing or Silent Hill? Why is Beijing's air dirty?

Smog is considered one of China's biggest problems. Smog is similar to fog, in which you can’t see anything a few meters away and it’s very difficult to breathe.

Causes of smog in China?

Where did it come from in China? The cause of Chinese smog is severe air pollution with harmful substances. This is because there are many factories in China that emit hazardous substances. In addition, in the northern provinces they burn coal, which also pollutes the atmosphere. Therefore, the dirtiest period in China is winter. In winter, smog covers almost the entire country, but is especially common in the north: in Beijing, Changchun, Shenyang, Dalian, Qingdao. Light smog, the Chinese no longer notice. More or less clean air in southern China, Tibet, Yunnan province, Hainan Island, the Uyghur Autonomous Region and partly in Inner Mongolia. Periodically, there is smog blown by the wind from northern China. Among megacities, Shenzhen is considered the cleanest in this regard.
Chinese smog is a major environmental disaster not only for China. But the whole world turns a blind eye to it, since no one wants to quarrel with the Celestial Empire. Sometimes smog from China reaches Russia, sometimes it covers South Korea. It happens that smog reaches Taiwan and Southeast Asia and even America. It is said that about 28% of San Francisco's smog is Chinese.


What do the Chinese breathe?

It’s even scary to imagine what the Chinese breathe and what’s going on in their lungs. People die from dirty air, and smog causes many problems. When it rains, dirt settles on the ground and gets into the water. Then it ends up in what people eat and drink. Living in such an environment is difficult and very harmful. Periodically, Beijing and other major cities in China issue the highest level of smog alert. Nobody likes it, but the Chinese are already used to it. As the smog intensifies in Beijing, schools are closed, many do not go to work, people try to stay at home unless absolutely necessary, and if they do go out, they wear masks. The Chinese install air purifiers in their homes. Because of the smog, many people are leaving China.

Smog prospects

According to the Chinese government, the great Chinese smog is the main discontent of the country's residents. Attempts are constantly being made to combat this phenomenon, but so far to no avail. The government plans to close all coal-fired power plants by 2017, and completely rid China of smog by 2030. They promise to significantly clean the air by the 2022 Winter Olympics. Most likely, production will simply be suspended for some period, as was already the case during the Summer Olympics. It seems that this environmental disaster in China will only progress in the future.


In China they are also trying to combat smog in a public way. They organize exhibitions of smog photographs, designers present entire collections of street masks, the Internet is full of various jokes about a Chinese man who vacuumed the air and has already vacuumed an entire brick. You can install an app on your phone for air pollution levels throughout China.


Those who have ever been to Beijing know very well: you cannot see the sun in the Chinese capital. As a rule, the city is shrouded in smog 24/7, and the sun's disk can appear due to the haze once a week at best. In January 2013, record smog was recorded in the capital - then the air quality index (AQI) showed the maximum degree of pollution, exceeding 500 points. Apparently, the events of two years ago may repeat themselves again.

Beijing authorities on Friday, December 18, announced the highest, red alert level due to deteriorating air quality over the next three days. “According to meteorological services, air pollution levels in Beijing will reach severe levels from December 19.

To protect public health and reduce pollution levels, Beijing issued a decree declaring a red alert level,” the statement said.

The special regime will begin at 7.00 (2.00 Moscow time) on December 19 and will last until 0.00 (7.00 Moscow time) on December 22. The red warning level was introduced a second time after the color scale was adopted. The red alert was first announced on December 8 and was lifted on December 10. Municipal authorities announce a red alert level when smog continues for more than three days in a row, orange for three days, yellow for two days and blue for one day.

The last time a dense cloud of smog blanketed the city, Beijing authorities introduced an orange rather than red alert level, prompting criticism from many Internet users. This time, the mayor of the capital, Wang Anshun, decided not to waste time on trifles and declared the maximum threat in the city.

According to data from the Beijing Environmental Monitoring Center, the content of particulate matter hazardous to health in the air over the Chinese capital is about 500 micrograms per cubic meter. m.

This level of pollution exceeds the recommended norm by 20 times.

According to environmentalists, by December 22, under the influence of a cold cyclone, air quality will begin to gradually improve.

In a statement, the Beijing Meteorological Service proposed canceling classes in schools and kindergartens. Restrictions are also being introduced on the movement of transport, which is considered by municipal authorities to be the main air poisoner. Freight transport will be completely prohibited from appearing on the roads, and cars whose registration numbers end in an even number will only be able to travel on an even numbered day, and vice versa, on an odd numbered day. Roads must be cleared of dust at least once a day, and construction work in the city must be frozen.

However, transport is far from the only source of dangerous emissions. The main reasons for the difficult environmental situation in Beijing are numerous coal-fired power plants, emissions from factories and construction enterprises located near the city.

During major international events, when the Chinese authorities want to show a beautiful picture of Beijing, these factories are switched off, and voila - blue skies are guaranteed over the capital.

This was the case, for example, on the eve of the parade in honor of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. This has happened before: during the summit in November 2014, at the direction of the government, dozens of factories within a radius of 200 km from Beijing stopped working.

The Chinese themselves are no strangers to such environmental situations - every resident of large cities has respiratory masks. However, the environmental disaster is increasingly affecting the population of the Middle Kingdom every year: according to a study by the German Max Planck Institute, about 1.4 million people die in China every year due to diseases caused by air pollution.

To highlight the environmental threat looming over China, performance artist Brother Nut used a vacuum cleaner to collect smog in Beijing and make bricks out of it as part of his Dust project.

The young man vacuumed the city air for 100 days with a powerful industrial apparatus. He then mixed the collected dust with clay and presented it to the general public as an indicator of environmental disaster in China.

“This dust is a side effect of human development, it is smog and dust from construction sites. When I first came to Beijing, I wore a protective mask for a few days, but then I stopped. There is no escape from such smog,” said the artist.

China, which is one of the world's leading carbon emitters, has announced plans to upgrade its coal-fired power plants over the next five years. However, the country will not be able to completely abandon them - they generate up to 60% of electricity. At the same time, the effect of updating power plants will not appear soon - the peak intensity of emissions will occur in 2030 and only then, as expected, will begin to decline.

Environmental pollution poses not only environmental but also political problems for China. Under public pressure, authorities are being forced to become increasingly transparent in matters related to air pollution, but many facts remain hidden and are not communicated to ordinary citizens. As urban environmental conditions deteriorate, environmentally sensitive Chinese are increasingly feeling betrayed, ultimately eroding the legitimacy of China's ruling Communist Party.

Since the beginning of 2013, signs of an imminent environmental disaster have been recorded in China for the 4th time. On Tuesday, January 29, toxic smog again covered the capital and eastern regions. The government has declared a “yellow” threat level and strongly advises residents not to leave their homes. Due to low visibility, dozens of flights were canceled and some highways were closed.

Last Tuesday the airborne particulate matter index (PM 2.5) was 526? Is it a lot or a little? This is tens of times higher than the World Health Organization safe standard for health, defined as 25 micrograms of dirty particles per 1 cubic meter. air.

The worst air pollution was observed on January 13, when the air content index of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) exceeded 900 units.

Interactive photography. Satellite photo. Beijing is at the top center. One photo was taken on January 3, 2013, when the air was clear, the second was taken on January 14, when toxic smog appeared. (NASA Photo, Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE MODIS Rapid Response):

Interactive photography. This is Beijing. One photo was taken on January 12, 2013, when the air was clear, the second was taken on January 16, when toxic smog appeared. [Click on photo to clean/pollute the air] (Reuters Photo | Stringer):

Interactive photography. Beijing. One photo was taken on January 10, 2013 in the morning, the second was also taken on January 10, but in the afternoon. [Click on photo to clean/pollute the air] (Photo by David Gray | Reuters):

Interactive photography. Beijing. One photo was taken on February 4, 2012, the second on January 14, 2013, when toxic smog appeared here. [Click on photo to clean/pollute the air] (Photo by Ed Jones | AFP | Getty Images):

Since the beginning of the year, the PM 2.5 index in Shanghai and Guangzhou has consistently reached health-hazardous levels of 200 units. (Photo by Courtesy of Ai Weiwei) | Reuters):



, January 9, 2013. Asia's leading financial center intends to combat environmental pollution from ships using low-quality fuel. (Photo by Philippe Lopez | AFP | Getty Images):

Now in Beijing, blue skies can only be seen in pictures or posters, January 23, 2013. (Photo by Feng Li | Getty Images):

Also, since the beginning of 2013, the number of patients with respiratory diseases has increased significantly. Beijing's children's hospitals are overcrowded. Everyone wears masks. (Photo by Jason Lee | Reuters):

Chinese authorities have temporarily closed more than 100 polluting factories and enterprises, and also reduced the government vehicle fleet by 30%. All this is done to combat toxic smog. (Reuters Photo | Stringer):

TV Tower "Oriental Pearl" in toxic smog. This is the second tallest television tower in Asia (468 meters high), the fifth tallest in the world. Shanghai, January 21, 2013. (Photo by Carlos Barria | Reuters):

In addition to Beijing, poisonous smog shrouded the eastern Chinese province of Shandong on January 19. Photographing toxic smog is not an easy task. (AFP Photo | Getty Images):

At the airport in Qingdao in eastern Shandong province, more than 20 flights were canceled on Tuesday, and many expressways in the province were closed.

And this is toxic smog at Beijing airport. On January 29, 49 flights were canceled here. (Photo by John E. Williamson):

Automotive movement “by touch”. Anhui Province, January 14, 2013. (Photo by STR | AFP | Getty Images):

Measurement of the index of fine particulate matter in the air (PM 2.5) in Beijing on January 23, 2013. Let us recall that the safe standard for health is 25 micrograms of dirty particles per 1 cubic meter. air. (Photo by Mark Ralston | AFP | Getty Images):

Toxic smog in the world's largest square, Tiananmen Square in Beijing, January 29, 2013. (Photo by Feng Li | Getty Images):

For the new mayor of Beijing, the environmental situation in the city will be a priority area of ​​work. However, air quality problems affect residents of almost all major cities in China. (Reuters Photo | Jason Lee):

On January 30, 2013, toxic smog covered an area of ​​1.3 million square kilometers. (Photo by Feng Li | Getty Images):

Enterprising Chinese billionaire Chen Guanbao launched a production cans with fresh air for residents of polluted cities. The assortment includes several scents, such as “ancient Tibet”, “post-industrial Taiwan” and “revolutionary Yan’an”, such a jar costs about 80 cents. (Photo by Barry Huang | Reuters):

Toxic smog in Beijing, China, January 2013. (Photo by Ed Jones | AFP | Getty Images):

On December 16, the Chinese capital announced a red - the highest - alert level due to smog, which will hang over the city for six days: until December 22.

A red alert level in Beijing is declared if the concentration of harmful aerosols in the air exceeds 500 mcg/m3. m., or is above 300 for two days or above 200 for five days in a row.

Beijing's medical facilities are on high alert: a sharp increase in the number of patients with heart and respiratory problems, primarily affected by severe air pollution, is expected. There is limited traffic on the capital's roads, which is considered the main emitter of pollutants in the capital. Classes in kindergartens and primary schools have been cancelled. Construction and road work have been frozen, production at most industrial enterprises has been reduced or suspended. At the same time, employers are obliged to pay wages to workers during their forced downtime.

Government agencies located in Beijing will work on a weekend basis until Thursday (December 22): only responsible people on duty are ordered to come to the offices.

Many private companies pay employees quite high “hazard bonuses” during smog. Thus, the Coca-Cola and Samsung corporations previously publicly announced that their “smog bonus” is 15% of their salary. Other large multinational corporations do the same, but do not admit it publicly. In particular, an insider at one of the American film companies reported that employees living in Beijing are generally paid double salaries. “Otherwise, people simply won’t go to Beijing to work, fearing for their health,” he noted.

Where does it come from

The main “supplier” of Beijing smog is the capital's vehicle fleet, which provides about 35% of the emission of harmful aerosols into the city air. Today in Beijing there are 5.7 million cars, which annually emit 500 thousand tons of pollutants into the atmosphere.

25% of pollution comes from dust from ongoing construction projects in the city and, of course, industrial exhaust. During the current smog, Beijing journalists recalled Mao Zedong’s figurative saying that when smoke from factory chimneys rises to the west and east of Tiananmen Square, socialism will come to the country. At the same time, reporters sadly joked: “socialism has already arrived in Beijing.” One coincidence speaks very illustratively of the role of industry in the pollution of Beijing's atmosphere: the problem of smog in the capital has sharply worsened since the end of 2011 - exactly at the moment when China took first place in the world in terms of industrial production.

About a quarter of the smog volume is “exported” to Beijing by the Hebei province surrounding the capital, the most environmentally unfavorable region of the PRC: suffice it to say that the six most polluted cities in China are located there. Hebei runs on coal and produces mainly steel and cement. The concentration of these environmentally “unfriendly” industries reaches its peak in the city of Shijiazhuang, located south of Beijing, which has received the nickname “capital of smog” in the Middle Kingdom. The wind rose in the region is such that from Shijiazhuang a toxic cloud blows onto the capital with enviable regularity. That's what happened this time too. The PMI map below from December 16 does a good job of showing how smog was creeping into the capital from the south.

The palette of the capital's poisoned haze is also enriched by residents of Zhangjiakou, Beijing's partner city for the 2022 Winter Olympics. In Zhangjiakou, the capital of the People's Republic of China is disliked, and in its rural suburbs they simply hate it fiercely. There is a strong belief here that Beijing is sucking all the money out of the region and stealing local brides. They take revenge on the capital in a sophisticated manner. Local villagers like to go out at night with the whole village into the fields to burn straw (officially this is prohibited) so that the wind will carry all the smoke to Beijing.

However, industrial and transport exhausts, peasant tricks and dusty construction sites are only part of the problem. One of the most important reasons for the current situation lies in... the measures taken by Beijing in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. The Chinese capital suffered from sandstorms that came from the Gobi. For the Summer Olympic Games, they decided to eliminate the problem by planting a “green ring” in the path of storms: a huge forest belt that traps wind and sand. The plan worked: today Beijing forgot to think about dust storms. However, blockage of winds from the Gobi led to a sharp drop in air circulation over the capital. As a result, the smog established here is not blown out and can hang for days, or even weeks. The Olympic forest belt project played a very cruel joke on the city.

How much does he weigh

Scientists have calculated that when the PMI reaches 300, the total mass of microparticles dangling in the capital's air is 5042.4 tons, which is equal to the weight of a thousand adult African elephants.

The difference in indicators: who to believe

In Beijing, there are two main sources of information on air conditions: the Meteorological Center and the American Embassy. Moreover, the American diplomatic mission loves to terrorize its audience with pollution indicators that are significantly (sometimes twice or more) higher than the official ones.

At the same time, you should not believe either one or the other.

The American Embassy compiles its picture of the state of Beijing air based on a sensor installed on the territory of the diplomatic mission. The official representative of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Jiang Yu, once perfectly commented on the situation: “These measurements cannot indicate the situation in Beijing, since they are carried out on US territory, which is the embassy zone.” All jokes aside, you really shouldn’t trust the American indicators. The United States Embassy is located in the polluted city center; the PMI indicator can be completely different even five kilometers from the diplomatic mission. Therefore, about the situation in Beijing, a huge metropolis with an area of ​​16.5 thousand square meters. km. – you shouldn’t judge solely based on data from “Uncle Sam”.

You cannot rely on the data of the capital's weather forecasters. They act exactly the opposite: they collect indicators from all over Beijing and give a weighted average, which often does not indicate the real state of affairs. The fact is that there are many rural counties under the administrative control of Beijing, where they can breathe quite freely while the center of the capital is choking from exhaust fumes. The capital's Hydrometeorological Center has also been caught in the “cunning” placement of sensors from which air pollution is measured. Many of them are located in parks and produce lower levels of pollution as a result.

Finally, scientists question the very principle of monitoring air conditions in China. Today, the main indicator in this area is the concentration of particulate matter measuring 2.5 microns (PM2.5). However, experts from Fudan University call for focusing on smaller particles, which are much more dangerous. According to them, the greatest harm to health is caused by aerosols whose particle diameter is 1 micron (PM1). This is explained by the fact that PM1 is capable of not only infecting the lungs, but also entering the blood from them, poisoning the body. Moreover, the smog found in many Chinese cities is dominated by PM1, not PM2.5. Thus, in the north of China, the amount of PM1 from the total volume of suspended particles in smog was 90%, in Shanghai – 80%. In this regard, scientists propose to forget about the PM2.5 index and start monitoring the content of particles with a diameter of a micron in the air, which will more realistically reflect the situation with smog.

How he kills you

Let's start with dry statistics: today in the capital of China, the “number one killer” is lung cancer. It causes 31.4% of premature deaths in Beijing. The second most common cause of death is heart disease. Doctors admit that both diseases are caused by smog. It also affects the spread of respiratory diseases. It is estimated that with an increase in PM2.5 levels of 10 micrograms per cubic meter, the number of viruses in the air will jump by 20%.

WHO has set a safe level of PM2.5 in the atmosphere at 25 micrograms per cubic meter. In China, this norm is three times higher: 75 mcg/cub.m. At the same time, Beijing does not even fit into these inflated standards even by weighted average indicators. Last year, the content of harmful aerosols in the sky over the city averaged 80.6 micrograms per cubic meter.

There is a proverb among old-timers of the capital of the People's Republic of China: “If you lived in Beijing for a year, you inhaled a brick.” So, this is all nonsense and myths: a brick in Beijing is inhaled in 100 days. This is evidenced by the results of the experience of one of the local artists, who vacuumed the capital’s air for 100 days, each day passing through the vacuum cleaner the same amount of air as passes through a person’s lungs in a day. And in the end, he made a brick from the contents of the dust collector.

Beijing smog not only affects you, but also your children's development. Earlier this year, Chinese lore experts revealed what “children of smog” would look like: snaggle-toothed and developmentally delayed. Doctors explained: smog leads to constant irritation of the nasal mucosa and chronic sinusitis. As a result, the breathing structure changes and the load on the oral cavity increases. As a result, the bite begins to change, the teeth become slanted, the upper lip thickens and lifts up. In addition, impaired breathing leads to severe oxygen starvation during sleep, which inhibits the mental development of children.

How to protect yourself

A couple of years ago, during another severe smog, a special group of scientists from the United States came to Beijing. Their task was to “study the effect of nuclear winter,” since the situation in the Chinese capital resembled it as closely as possible.

Actually, the basic precautions during smog are similar to those prescribed in life safety courses for survivors of a nuclear attack. The population is advised to batten down the windows and not stick their noses out of the house; if necessary, go outside, be sure to wear a respirator. It is strongly recommended to constantly wet clean your home, as well as shower more often and drink plenty of water to remove harmful substances that have entered the body.

Sports lovers are not advised to do exercises even in the premises of fitness clubs. “Ventilation in sports clubs is usually powerful and takes air directly from the street, pushing smog into the room. But inside, this is simply not visually noticeable due to the low thickness of the atmospheric column,” explains Zhou Qinlu, a fitness expert from the Beijing Institute of Physical Education and Sports.

Meanwhile, a radical way to solve the smog problem is gaining popularity among the Beijing population: leave the city, and even get the hell out of China in general. Scientifically, this is called “eco-emigration,” and the term “fourth wave of emigration” is also common among Chinese sociologists. In the first wave, ordinary workers left China, in the second, techies, and in the third, investors. In the current wave, people are fleeing, having lost all hope for a quick improvement in the state of the environment in the Middle Kingdom.

A representative of one of the agencies involved in processing emigration documents said that during weeks of heavy smog the number of their clients usually increases by 300%. According to him, 80% of those applying to travel to another country note the terrible environmental situation in China as one of the main reasons. According to expert forecasts, the phenomenon of environmental emigration will be observed in the People's Republic in the next five to ten years. The backbone of eco-emigrants will be representatives of the middle class, mainly married couples between the ages of 30 and 40, who do not want their children to grow up in conditions of an environmental disaster.

How Beijing fights smog

For the main city of the entire People's Republic of China to welcome guests with disgusting air is a disgrace. And the guests themselves are not happy: because of the smog, the flow of tourists to the capital is drying up. In 2013, the decline in incoming tourism exceeded 10%. The economic losses of tour operators are nothing compared to the amount of damage caused to the international image of the city, from where even foreigners who once planned to forever link their lives with Beijing are fleeing due to the disgusting state of the environment. But in five years the metropolis will host the Winter Olympics. The situation urgently needs to be corrected, and the authorities understand this: a huge amount of money is already being invested in cleaning the capital’s air. Half of the funds allocated to combat air pollution in China were spent in Beijing: $125 billion out of $300 billion.

In 2014, Beijing passed a law to combat air pollution. Since then, the capital has been fighting smog not according to a plan, but according to a legally binding document, which spells out the duties and responsibilities not only of the entire city, but also of each of its districts. Moreover, if previously only measures were established to “prevent the growth” of emissions of harmful substances, the law speaks of its “reduction”. Under the law, enterprises in the capital are subject to fines of up to 500,000 yuan for refusing to suspend production during heavy smog. For each repeated violation, the fine will be doubled, and the maximum ceiling is deliberately not set.

In 2014, in order to restore the air circulation stifled by the Olympic “green ring” in Beijing, a “six drafts” plan was developed. The city is creating a new man-made wind rose, thanks to which all the smog will be blown out of Beijing. Six main routes for pumping air through the metropolis have been developed. Two of them go from northwest to southeast, four from north to south. True, the city planning committee was never able to clearly explain the principle of commanding the winds. They only said that the project is still at the development stage, and houses located along the route of air corridors will not be demolished.

Such a lack of information at one time gave birth to a journalistic canard that these air corridors would be purged with the help of giant fans. Of course, this is nonsense. The air will move on its own, according to the laws of physics: from a zone of high pressure in the cool suburbs to a zone of lower pressure in the hot and gas-filled center.

To reduce vehicle emissions, Beijing will ban older vehicles with high emissions from the roads from Monday to Friday from February 15, 2017. From December 15 this year, they are no longer allowed to appear on the capital’s highways during smog.

Advanced technologies to combat air pollution are also being actively introduced. In this aspect, a real find was the project of Dutch engineers, who propose to the Beijing government to build huge air purifiers capable of passing a million cubic meters of air through them per day. Structures 7 meters high remove coal dust from the atmosphere, which is converted into synthetic diamonds in 30 minutes at high temperatures and pressure. There is plenty of “raw material” for making such stones in the Beijing air: 32% of the local smog consists of coal soot. The money from the sale of artificial diamonds is planned to be used for the construction of new air purifiers - in this way the project can finance itself. Testing of this miracle technology is proceeding as usual: it turned out that the air around the giant filters is 70-75% cleaner than the average in Beijing.

However, perhaps the most exciting, long-lasting and strategically important “anti-smog” project will be carried out not in Beijing, but in neighboring Zhangjiakou (the same one where peasants are burning fields to spite the capital). This city will turn into the Chinese capital of alternative energy: it will be supplied entirely with electricity from wind and solar energy. The experience of this municipality will be used to reduce the use of coal throughout the country, which today provides 68% of national energy consumption, while at the same time being the most smog-producing fuel.

Zhangjiakou has already created China's first renewable energy development zone. Today, the capacity of solar and wind power plants installed there reaches 8 GW, and by 2030 it will increase to 50 GW. This is more than enough: Zhangjiakou's total electricity demand does not exceed 2 GW. The rest of the electricity can now be supplied to other regions of the country. However, the project operators are faced with a problem: electricity from solar and wind power plants is used extremely inefficiently: up to 30% simply does not find a consumer. The main reason for this is the underdevelopment of electrical networks. The problem is not local, but nationwide: last year in China, 15% of the current from wind power plants and 12% from solar power plants were not used. According to experts, due to the low efficiency of using alternative energy sources, the Chinese energy sector lost 51 billion yuan (about six billion dollars) from 2011 to 2015. With the efficient use of this energy, China could save 430 million tons of coal over the same period - the weight of 42.5 thousand Eiffel Towers. An offensive situation is developing in China's alternative energy sector. Thus, the PRC has installed almost twice as many wind turbines as the USA, but due to the inefficient operation of the energy system, they produce less energy than the American ones. A solution to this problem was proposed by a team of scientists from China, Germany and the USA. They developed a plan according to which, within five years, the “idle consumption” of alternative energy in Zhangjiakou could be reduced from the current 30% to 1%. The essence of the proposal is to create an integrated network designed for alternative energy sources in the subregion Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Province. Its heart will be Zhangjiakou, around which up to 50% of all alternative energy resources in the subregion are concentrated. Instead of “grounding” the electricity produced, it is supposed to be sent to a location only 60 km away. Beijing, which is hungry for alternative energy: the capital's power engineers will completely abandon coal in 2017 - the resulting gap will need to be filled. In addition, the demand for electricity in Beijing is constantly growing due to the growth of the fleet of electric vehicles: by 2020 there will be about 600 thousand of them in the capital. All this demand can be more than met by the alternative energy sector of Zhangjiakou. According to estimates of the joint group of experts, it is possible to create an energy system that actively uses alternative energy sources in the subregion in 4-5 years. But this requires the development of a clear investment plan and the construction of a new energy distribution system that will make alternative electricity more accessible. Experts are confident that the experience of creating such a system in the subregion will be useful in the future both throughout China and beyond.

Konstantin Shchepin

It seems like everyone has heard about Beijing smog. This is the scourge not only of the Chinese capital, but also of most other large cities. They scare him, they fear him. But what exactly is smog, and how dangerous is it?

When you look at classical Chinese paintings, you notice that they often depict haze: objects that are in the distance seem to disappear, barely drawn. This not only gives the picture a special charm, but also serves as reliable evidence that smog (or haze) in China is not at all a phenomenon of today.

Han Jingwei, "Clouds Are Floating", ink.

The causes of smog are varied. This is both a geographical factor and an anthropogenic (human) one. Beijing lies on a plain, but is surrounded on three sides by mountains that approach the city itself. Western winds bring here air from the deserts of Central Asia, which contains tiny particles of sand; the ocean in the east saturates the air with moisture. This creates a beautiful haze.

But then the human factor comes into play. The fact is that 70% of all power plants in China are still coal-fired. It is also traditional to heat and cook food on coal. Add to this numerous enterprises and cars (now in Beijing, which has a population of 20 million, there are more than 5 million cars, not counting visitors from other cities). Harmful emissions settle on small particles and create an explosive mixture that is very dangerous to health.

This is why in Beijing you can so often see people wearing masks and even respirators. On days when it was possible, it is not recommended to go outside again, especially for children, the elderly and the sick, or to hold sports, cultural and entertainment events. According to the degree of danger, smog is divided into four levels: blue, yellow, orange and red. There are days when it is even stronger. Sometimes you can smell the characteristic smell of coal and the taste of sand in the air.

The word “smog” is translated into several words: 雾霾 wùmái(fog, haze + dust suspension, dusty haze), 烟雾 yānwù(smoke, soot, soot, haze + fog, haze), 尘雾 chénwù(dust, ashes, dirt + fog, haze).

Smog persists in Beijing in the evening

And yet I could - it’s beautiful. The haze adds mystery to the city and removes unnecessary details. The photographs are also unusual.

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