China smog shuts schools, factories

Air pollution 25 times above safe limit

Beijing ordered hundreds of factories to shut and allowed children to skip school as choking smog reached over 25 times safe levels on Tuesday, casting a cloud over China’s participation in Paris climate talks.

A thick grey haze shrouded the capital with concentrations of PM 2.5, harmful microscopic particles that penetrate deep into the lungs, as high as 634 micrograms per cubic metre.

The reading given by the US embassy dwarfs the maximum recommended by the World Health Organisation, which is just 25 micrograms per cubic metre Swathes of northern China were hit and levels in Jinan, a provincial capital hundreds of km away, reached over 400.

Authorities in Beijing ordered the closure of 2,100 highly polluting businesses, the state-run China Daily said, and advised citizens to stay indoors.

The capital told primary and middle schools to stop outdoor activities and gave students permission to stay home, adding the city would provide online instruction, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Airlines cancelled over 30 flights from Beijing and Shanghai, many to highly polluted Shaanxi province which is a key coal producer.

The smog nightmare came after Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed “action” on greenhouse emissions at the climate change summit in Paris.

Most of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions come from coal burning which spikes in winter along with demand for heating and is the main cause of smog.

Mr Xi repeated China’s pledge that emissions would peak by “around 2030” but told the summit that poor nations should not have to sacrifice economic growth.

China is estimated to have emitted nearly twice as much carbon dioxide as the United States in 2013, and around two-and-a-half times the European Union’s total.

Even official news media joined in the criticism, with Xinhua posting on Twitter: “Breathless. Speechless.”

Twitter is blocked in mainland China, where pollution is a key cause of discontent with the ruling Communist party, and Chinese-language reports were more circumspect.

Environmental group Greenpeace said in a statement the pollution showed the “weakness” of Beijing’s air quality alert system.

The city only issued an orange alert, the second highest on the four-colour scale. A red alert would require schools to close and ban half the city’s cars from its streets.

“The shocking levels of air pollution we have seen in the last few days are a serious danger to the health of hundreds of millions of citizens,” Greenpeace said.

The capital’s “insufficient alerting system has compounded the problem”, it added.

One angry resident wrote on Chinese Twitter equivalent Sina Weibo: “I think they are concerned about the high costs of a red alert and the difficulties of implementing it.”

The nightmare has also prompted jokes about the end of the world. Some of the Chinese capital’s 22.5 million residents have turned to gallows humour to cope with persistent toxic air.

A joke circulating among Chinese journalists told of a reporter approaching an old woman on the street to ask about the impact of the smog. “The impact is huge,” the interviewee replies. “First of all, I’m your uncle.”

Some Weibo users traced the shapes of famous Beijing landmarks on to photographs in which the buildings were nearly completely obscured by the smog and posted them online.

One said living in Beijing was like working as crew on a zombie apocalypse movie.

“As a friend finished eating lunch he slapped on his face mask and said he had to return to the set. They were filming Resident Evil in the afternoon,” one microblogger joked, invoking the horror film series.

“Pray for Beijing” had become a meme on China’s mobile messaging platform WeChat.

China’s ministry of environmental protection said on Sunday that the recent period of smog was due to “unfavourable” weather.

Chinese researchers have identified pollution as a major source of unrest around China.