beyondbrics

By Beijing’s standards, the air quality has been perfectly ordinary – nearly two weeks of unbroken smog but not as bad as the acrid smoke that periodically descends on the city.

Yet without any apparent catalyst, popular anger about the pollution has built this week to a new and, for the government, worrying crescendo.

Bloggers have accused national leaders of hiding from the dirty reality behind large air filters. State-run media have joined into the fray, saying the city’s environmental bureau has concealed the true state of pollution. A new municipal anthem has been created about the horrid air. And the government has been forced to push back.

At issue is official reporting of the pollution as much as the pollution itself.

The US embassy publishes an hourly update, available via Twitter and online, of the air quality readings in its immediate vicinity. This index has become indispensable for the expatriate community in Beijing and for a growing number of Chinese, it is a touchstone about whether it is safe to venture outside for any length of time.

The problem lies in the fact that Beijing also has an air quality index – and its readings are consistently much better than those of the US embassy. At the time of writing, the US index was 178 and “unhealthy”, while the municipal index was 82 and “good”. (The main explanation for the variance is that the embassy includes smaller particulate matter not captured by the city’s index.)

With Weibo, China’s Twitter look-alike, full of posts about the contradiction, Global Times, usually a tub-thumping nationalist newspaper, published a critical editorial on Wednesday:

A lot of Chinese government officials have a habit of down-playing bad news. They think this is the “responsible” thing to do. In the end, though, it will only erode the public trust that the government rests on.

An example of how the pollution debate is breeding cynicism came in a flurry of Weibo posts showing how Zhongnanhai, the Communisty Party’s leadership compound, apparently makes ample use of huge air filters. An air filter maker, Yuanda, had published pictures last year of what it said were its machines in Zhongnanhai as a stamp of approval for its product. In the eyes of micro-bloggers, however, it has become a mark of leaders’ hypocrisy.

“No wonder the central leadership doesn’t pay attention to pollution. Even their air is specially provided,” said one post that was heavily re-tweeted.

Then came the musical interlude. Riffing off “Beijing Welcomes You”, an anthem of the 2008 Olympics, a parody duet, “Smog Capital Welcomes You”, has become a hit.

The video is a portrait Beijing at its worst. The lyrics flow better and sound funnier in Chinese, but for a taste here is a translation of one stanza: “The environment ministry hides the truth / We get cheated. We cannot take any more / We cannot leave our house without masks / Smog Capital welcomes you, with particles in the air.”

And finally, after all that, came the government’s response.

Asked about the US embassy index, Du Shaozhong, vice head of the Beijing environmental protection bureau, said: “I am not clear about their monitoring methods and how they ensure accuracy. But what I think is that their reporting method is mostly about stirring things up. It is not the attitude of people conducting serious research.”

Talk about a bad air day.

(Additional reporting by Gwen Chen)

Related reading:
US Embassy air quality data undercut China’s own assessments, LA Times
Beijing: the most liveable city in China, for whom? beyondbrics
Pollution hits Chinese children, FT