For this Current Event, I reviewed a fascinating article penned by Edward Wong of the New York Times. Titled “Outrage Grows Over Air Pollution and China’s Response,” the article covers recent controversy regarding the astounding amount of air pollution in China today, especially in Beijing. Beijing has been for many years entrenched in a thick layer of brown smog. Smog is a mixture of pollutants, principally ground-level ozone, produced by chemical reactions in the air involving smog-forming chemicals. A major portion of smog-formers come from burning of petroleum-based fuels such as gasoline. In the last few days, especially, the smog has reached new levels, and has had drastic effects on Beijing. For instance, from this past Sunday to Tuesday, the government canceled over 700 inbound and outbound flights to and from Capital International Airport, and long stretches of highway have been shut down due to low visibility. Yet the government has insisted the delayed flights were due to “the weather condition.” The Chinese government has been whitewashing air quality reports for years. For instance, an air quality gauge on top of the U.S. embassy in Beijing gives hourly updates via Twitter, and since Sunday, that quality has reached the gauge’s potential on the negative side, the so-called “crazy bad” reading. Yet, over the last 10 years (and the last few days), Beijing officials have listed air quality as good or excellent over 80% of the time, because they only report on larger air particles, about size PM 10. The majority of pollution is actually derived from pH 2.5 particles, which the government refuses to account for, which skews their air quality evaluations drastically. The Chinese people are now beginning to fight back. As Yu Ping, who has started a public campaign to demand more accurate measurements, stated, “The government is just so bureaucratic that they don’t seem to care whether we common people live or die. And it is up to us, the common people, to prod them and pressure them.” Pan Shiyi, a real estate agent, has asked his seven million microblog followers to vote on whether the authorities should use a stricter standard to assess air quality, and is pushing for immediate disclosure of data. He has given hope to a community that has had its lung cancer rate raised by 60% in the last decade, despite a constant smoking rate.
This article’s contents could have massive implications for humanity. China’s revival of trade relations with the West during Nixon’s presidency jumpstarted its archaic economy, and it has for years now been one of the fastest growing economies in the world. But the nation still seems to be in the pre-Progressive Era stage that industrializing nations usually experience, and has created some serious issues, like this environmental one. If pollution continues unchecked, China’s population might disintegrate due to illness, and it will be impossible to perform even the most menial outdoor activities. (Recent reports have shown that almost any type of outdoor activity in Beijing’s environment will take serious tolls on an individual). It will stop any enterprising companies from doing business there, and their own infrastructure and economic systems will probably collapse. In short, if such an environment remains, all China has built up over the last several decades will collapse to the ground, and the U.S. will no longer have to worry about them as a world threat.
Overall, this article was well written. It combined a lot of different details and information researched by two men named Li Bibo and Edy Yin. From there, it extrapolated a strong quantitative analysis of smog and of its effects. The scientific explanation of how the government was creating such favorable evaluations (by ignoring certain types of particles) was especially interesting. But it did not just depend on hard facts and numbers; it also appealed to the reader’s emotions. It was littered with quotes from local Beijing citizens, and added nice personal touches to their caricatures. For instance, the author noted how Yu Ping was the father of a 7-year-old, and almost nothing plucks the heartstrings more than a suffering child. It was able to portray the “good guys” (the Chinese citizens and the U.S. embassy) and the “bad guys” (the Chinese Communist Party) nicely, and was fairly successful in implanting a viewpoint in the reader’s head. The photo used captured the terrible reality of living in smog. All the figures are dark, walking down a gloomy street, and it simply embodies the current disaster in Beijing quite well. Also, the article finished with a bang, as it described the astonishing increased rate of lung cancer due to this smog.
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