New | Help your neighbour, help yourself: Beijing tries to improve its air by cleaning up pollution in nearby Chinese cities
As it runs out of ways to cut pollution, the capital is investing heavily to slash coal use in surrounding cities, with prospects of knock-on benefits
An old Chinese saying advises people to “sweep the snow from your own door step” and not to worry about others’ problems. But Beijing has found it could in fact benefit from helping its neighbours clean up their air.
The capital, which has hit a wall in reducing its choking air pollution, has spent 460 million yuan (HK$563 million) on helping its neighbouring cities, Langfang and Baoding in Hebei province, to cut their coal consumption.
The money will go towards upgrading large-scale coal-fired boilers and phasing out smaller ones in the two cities, which are among China’s top 10 polluted cities, and the move is expected to reduce the cities’ coal consumption by 770,000 tonnes this year, according to their local governments.
The capital’s help rendered to its poorer, more polluted neighbours is only the start of a larger effort as the central government works out an ambitious plan to build Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei into a megacity to address regional development imbalance and worsening air problems.
Tianjin will also contribute 400 million yuan to help clean up Hebei’s heavily polluted cities of Tangshan and Cangzhou.
