I was tempted to post this as an independent thread when the issue first surfaced in world news, but it'll sit well here. There's a relevant post in the Shaolin forum already.

OPINION ASIA February 5, 2013, 11:20 a.m. ET
How Beijing Hid the Smog
China can reverse its air pollution nightmare by committing to real transparency and enforcement.
By STEVEN Q. ANDREWS

Last month Beijing's air quality horror show reached a nightmarish crescendo. January 2013 recorded by far the highest levels of pollution in recent years. Judging by the statistics, the smog that engulfed China's capital was as inevitable as it was apocalyptic. Though government only began reporting concentrations of harmful fine particulate pollution earlier this year, concentrations of a key precursor, nitrogen dioxide, have been significantly higher than 2008 levels for each of the past four years.

China can reverse this downward spiral, but only by committing to the kind of real transparency and enforcement that have historically been in short supply.

When Beijing began reporting air quality data 15 years ago, officials congratulated themselves for their transparency, then turned around and tried to paint a rosy picture. In order to promote progress in combating pollution and put pressure on government officials, days that met China's air quality standards were called blue sky days. Amazingly, every single year the reported annual tally of blue sky days increased—even as pollution levels further deteriorated.

Though the Chinese government has continued to report raw data, it ended the blue-sky campaign in early 2012 because of growing public skepticism about official blue sky counts. That skepticism was fueled by hourly updates from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing's Twitter feed. Since August 2008, the embassy has tweeted independently measured pollution concentrations and described them according to a health index developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The effort revealed that China's blue sky days often had hazardous levels of pollution. Using Embassy data, Chinese programmers developed mobile apps that have been downloaded more than one million times. One app, rather than telling people whether it was a blue sky day, used a more effective metric: whether a pollution mask should be used when venturing out in the smog.


Getty Images
A tourist walks through severe pollution in Tiananmen Square, Jan. 31.

For most of the last month, a mask has been recommended. The monthly average fine particulate concentration in January 2013 was 200 micrograms per cubic meter. To be considered good in the U.S, air must have a daily fine particulate concentration of no more than 12 micrograms.

Last month, nine days in Bejing had hazardous fine particulate concentration more than 300 micrograms and Jan. 13 reached an apocalyptic 630 micrograms. Even Beijing's annual average of more than 90 micrograms in recent years has been far higher than the worst day at the worst monitoring station in the smoggy U.S. city of Los Angeles (60 micrograms).

If Beijing wants to get serious about tackling pollution, it won't be enough to come clean on air quality data. The government also needs to toughen the health standards by which that data is judged. Although China's descriptions of pollution were recently revised, pollution levels that are six times higher than the U.S. standard are still classified as good air quality. Even the highest daily fine particulate concentration recorded last year in Los Angeles would be considered good in China.

Enforcement poses another challenge. There's no doubt that the Chinese government can deliver genuine blue skies for important events. Despite world-wide concern, the Olympics had reasonable air quality. During both the 60th anniversary of the Communist party in October 2009, and the once-a-decade Communist Party transition in November 2012, air quality was again relatively good.

But while Beijing can require emissions control measures and create temporary good air quality when there is a political imperative, regular environmental enforcement is largely non-existent. The U.S., in contrast, has had relatively strong and consistent enforcement.

In 2008, the EPA under President George W. Bush, sometimes criticized for weak enforcement, collected a civil penalty of more than $5 million from Exxon Mobil for failing to monitor and report emissions at a single refinery in Texas. Last year, under the Obama administration, there were 10 civil penalties of more than $1 million for various violations of the U.S. Clean Air Act. Required pollution control investments under the penalty agreements totaled approximately $1 billion.

In China, the maximum statutory fine for refusing to report emissions data is only 50,000 yuan ($7,653) and penalties for exceeding emission standards can only reach twice that at 100,000 yuan. Although transparency on fines is lacking, state-run media reported in 2011 that the Ministry of Environmental Protection fined 11 power plants for disabling monitoring equipment, manipulating data and exceeding standards.

The violators included China Power Investment, China Guodian, China Huadian and China Datang. China Datang, a Global 500 company which owns three of the offending plants, is a state-owned enterprise. The total fine for each facility was never more than 150,000 yuan.

Even in the absence of much transparency on enforcement, it's easy to understand why factories cheat. It costs less to pay penalties for exceeding emissions limits than it does to use the emissions control equipment that plants have already been required to install.

China is in the process of revising its Air Pollution Control Law. Beijing also recently released its own new air pollution regulations for public comment. If penalties for violations are increased, there is hope that meaningful enforcement and lasting air quality improvements will finally begin. But for now, unless you are visiting Beijing for a major event, be sure to pack a pollution mask.

Mr. Andrews is an environmental and legal consultant based in Beijing.