Tianjin commits to fighting smog in north China
Print Edition
AN air pollution control regulation passed at Tianjin’s legislature seeks to curb the smog blanketing north China through concerted efforts with the city’s neighbors.
The regulation, set to come into effect this year, aims to boost coordination of measures designed to limit air pollution among the coastal city with Beijing and Hebei Province, an area in which Chinese leaders have promoted greater integration.
It calls for a joint response to thick smog in the region and information sharing between the three jurisdictions. It also seeks to strengthen research into the problem and unify standards for pollution control.
China amended its environmental protection law in April last year, vowing harsher penalties for those failing to conform with environmental standards. Officials will be forced to resign for ineffective pollution prevention.
The Tianjin regulation has also raised the cost for polluting the air, subjecting companies and individuals to unlimited fines if they don’t cease their polluting activities.
“Past penalties haven’t done much to deter firms and they tend to relapse into their old polluting practices after paying the fines,” said Gao Shaolin, a lawmaker in Tianjin.
Beijing also enacted a pollution control regulation last March in response to mounting public complaints about smog in the national capital.
The city failed to meet a key pollution reduction target last year, with the annual density of PM2.5 down 4 percent, compared with 5 percent set for the whole year.
Beijing has become increasingly prone to smog in recent years, partly due to the rise of PM2.5 density in the atmosphere.
In review of the capital’s implementation of its pollution control regulation, local lawmakers said the city has been lax in enforcing pollution discharge restraints and should step up pollution fines.
Authorities have pledged greater fiscal support for the drive against smog and plan to close down another 300 polluting factories this year.
Beijing is also calling for greater cooperation with Tianjin and Hebei as up to 36 percent of pollutants in the city’s air are from other places, authorities in the capital said.
“The choking smog is no longer a single city’s problem and so it demands a regional solution,” said Zhang Gui, an academic of regional integration at Hebei University of Technology.
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