Pollution - The Price of Economic Development

After having praised China's current economic development, I think the time has come to talk about negative aspects of the actual situation as well.

Beijing is China's largest car market and today the city is already crowded with over 2.4 million cars. Every day, about 1000 cars are licensed leading to even more crowded streets and of course even more emissions. Those numbers and the fact that most cars lack a catalytic converter have led to the city being now the most polluted in the whole world.

When measured by the Chinese "Air Pollution Index" published daily by the Chinese State Environmental Protection Administration, the value for Beijing constantly lies above 140. This is over two times as high as the normal value of 60 reached by Los Angeles, which is today the most polluted US city. A blogger regularly records those values and publishes them here.

Still much more frightening is the fact that Beijing's air pollution index on some days has already hit a value of 500, the actual maximum of the scale. A value as high as that is surely hazardous to human health - sometimes the local government advises people to stay at home and keep their windows shut.

My own experience tells me that nothing of this is exaggerated. When I first came here in August, I sometimes had difficulty breathing. Unfortunately, the human body seems to adapt to those conditions. Nevertheless, look at those pictures in order to grasp Beijng's pollution reality.

In this video you can see the view from my window on a polluted, but still quite regular day - I miss our fresh Austrian and Swiss air!




P.S.: Let me just add one little comment: When you have lived in Beijing for a while, you cannot take things like this seriously :-)