China Focus: Clearing China's air

BIG CHALLENGE

It will be a huge challenge to clean the Chinese sky in such a short period of time, said Liu Hongnian, a meteorology professor at Nanjing University.

He believes regional air pollution is directly related to the layout of high polluting enterprises.

"Air pollutants are prone to accumulation in certain regions but are spreading fast to other places, making it a difficult problem to tackle without joint efforts from different regions," he said.

In 2013, China's smog belt began to stretch from the developed regions of the Yangtze and Zhujiang river deltas and the area around Beijing and Tianjin,to other localities where smog was previously seldom seen. The southernmost province of Hainan and autonomous region of Tibet have recorded smoggy days.

Growing social consumption of fossil fuels is seen as the major source of increased air pollutants, while photochemical pollution, cooking and vehicle emissions also contribute to the phenomenon, according to a report released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in November last year.

Despite a government pledge to cut consumption of fossil fuel to below 65 percent of primary energy use by 2017, coal still fuels most of China's electricity, making it difficult to eradicate smog in such a short time, said Wang Jinnan, deputy head of the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning.

China needs to break its addiction to coal and use its natural resources more efficiently if it wants to end air pollution, Wang said, while advocating control of the number of cars and promotion of the development of clean energy.

While introducing forceful measures to reduce air pollution, Wang pointed out that government officials should also be aware of advancing economic development.