300 polluting companies to close
Print Edition
BEIJING plans to shut 300 companies this year to help reduce choking air pollution in the Chinese capital.
The city is “determined to migrate its non-core functions,” Beijing Mayor Wang Anshun said yesterday, adding that authorities are adopting a coordinated development strategy laid out for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.
Beijing closed 392 manufacturing and heavy-polluting firms last year.
In 2013, the city government limited the number of new vehicles on the roads and ordered the closure or upgrading of facilities at 1,200 companies.
But the city’s authorities failed to meet a key pollution-reduction target last year as the annual average density of PM2.5 fell by only 4 percent, against a target of 5 percent, Wang said.
The city has become increasingly susceptible to choking smog in recent years, partly due to the rise of PM2.5 density in the atmosphere.
PM2.5 refers to fine particles measuring less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter and can be inhaled deep into human lungs, posing severe health hazards.
The PM2.5 reduction target will remain at 5 percent for this year and the municipal government plans to spend 10.8 billion yuan (US$1.7 billion) to tackle air pollution, Wang told the annual legislative session, which opened yesterday.
The municipal government vowed stringent enforcement of environment protection laws and regulations this year adding that it will initiate charges on clearing particles emitted from construction sites.
It also pledged greater fiscal support for pollution control, while the local legislature will review enforcement of a pollution reduction guideline that went into effect last March.
This year’s session of Beijing’s People’s Congress opened with one of the hottest topics being the “integration” of Beijing with its neighbors Hebei Province and Tianjin City.
If successful it will not only resolve some of Beijing’s population issues, but also bridge the huge public resource and services gap between the capital and its neighbors. As well as the 300 manufacturing firms slated for closure this year, a number of industrial workshops will also be shut down, Wang said.
Sun Shuo, deputy director of the Xicheng District government, said that with the closure of a clothing wholesale market near Beijing Zoo last year, more than 1,300 shops had been moved out of Beijing. The vacant space will be allocated to e-commerce, banking and financial firms.
A total of 30 industrial relief and cooperation platforms and 53 related programs were launched to remove heavy-polluting companies from Beijing in the past year, Wang said.
Thirty-six wholesale markets were also shut down.
The municipal industrial and commercial authorities have turned down 3,760 applications for new businesses because they were on the list of prohibited or restricted operations.
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