Airpocalypse: U.S. Embassy Stocks Up on Air Purifiers

Air pollution is driving expatriate workers away from China, or dissuading those outside China from taking postings here.

By EDWARD WONG

A sales manager for Blueair, a Swedish maker of air purifiers, said the United States Embassy had ordered more than a couple thousand but less than 5,000 units.

Companies and institutions employing foreigners in China are starting to realize that to keep workers in the cities, they need to make changes to the way they operate. 

Based on anecdotal evidence, air pollution, more than anything else, is driving expatriate workers away from China, or dissuading those outside China from taking postings here. 

News reports of various rounds of “airpocalypse” descending on Chinese cities have not helped.

In response, some employers are handing out hardship bonuses. 

Others are allowing employees more vacation or work time outside the country. 

In recent months, the United States Embassy in Beijing has come up with its own strategy to blunt the hazards and the fears that come with Chinese smog: It has ordered thousands of air purifiers for the homes of employees from the United States.
Blueair, the Swedish company that is filling the embassy order, said the purchase was among the largest from China. 

“This is an important order,” said Jonas Holst, international sales manager for Blueair. 

“It’s absolutely in the top end.”
Anxieties over air quality surged in January, when levels of fine particulate matter during a particularly smoggy spell in northern China reached, in some areas of Beijing, 40 times the recommended exposure limit set by the World Health Organization. 

The United States State Department sent a team of experts to China to evaluate employees’ homes and make recommendations on how to ensure relatively clean air quality indoors. 

American officials concluded they needed to place more air purifiers in frequently used residential spaces, such as bedrooms and living areas, even though new employees already get some units when they first arrive. (The embassy itself has a centralized air filtration system.)
After the team left, the United States government put out a call for proposals, and in the end it decided to go with an American supplier of Blueair products.
Some of the Blueair machines have begun arriving in Beijing. 

The United States Embassy declined to provide official comment on the purchase and did not specify the number of units bought. 

Mr. Holst also declined to give numbers, but he said the total was somewhere under 5,000 and more than a couple thousand.
He also declined to give details on the purchase price. 

It is safe to assume the price per unit for the embassy order is much less than the retail price in Beijing. Torana Clean Air, an official Blueair seller in the Chinese capital, said its least expensive unit, the 203 model, cost 3,231 renminbi, or about $530. 

That model is mainly used for bedrooms and offices up to 20 square meters, or 215 square feet. 

The best-selling larger model, the 503, costs 6,174 renminbi. 

There is a top-of-the-line model imported from Sweden that goes for 11,980 renminbi, but sales of that are rare. 

Most Blueair units are made for export in Shenzhen, in southern China.
Prices of Blueairs vary around the world because of taxation, import duties and transport costs, said Chris Buckley, the head of Torana Clean Air (who is not related to the Chris Buckley who reports on China for The New York Times). 

Mr. Buckley said he had supplied schools and embassies in Beijing, including those of France, Finland and the Netherlands.
Among foreigners, a popular — and pricier — alternative to Blueair purifiers are those from IQAir, a Swiss company. 

Other brands are edging into the market, given the growth prospects in China. 

Some medical experts have tried to give their assessments of the models. 

Among them is Dr. Richard St. Cyr, a doctor at Beijing United Family Hospital who writes a health blog and a column for the Chinese site of The Times. 

In his estimate, Blueair performs well in tests against other brands.
Mr. Holst said Blueair had had a “significant” increase in revenue from China sales in the last 12 to 15 months, though he declined to give numbers. 

The biggest revenues are from Beijing and Shanghai, he said, though Blueair has a sales presence in 50 Chinese cities.
Last week, Gary F. Locke, the American ambassador, announced he would leave his post early next year and return to Seattle. 

He has been in Beijing a little more than two years, a relatively short period for the job. 

His announcement prompted widespread speculation that he was fleeing the city’s notorious air. (After all, some Chinese are decamping to rural areas to lead greener lives.)
But Mr. Locke told The Los Angeles Times that he was leaving because he and his wife had agreed their children should spend their junior and senior years of high school in the United States. 

“We are concerned about it,” he said of the air quality, “but that’s not what motivated us to go back.”
On Friday and Saturday, the air quality index in the capital, as measured by a device on the rooftop of the United States Embassy, reached the “hazardous” level. 

That is when American officials recommend staying indoors, preferably with purifiers on.

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China's massive pollution problem

 

Air pollution has made many cities in China "barely suitable for living," and is making the population sick — and angry. 
By Keith Wagstaff

Quite literally sick and tired of the smog. 

How bad is China's smog?
Sixteen of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in China.
The air in some cities there is so bad that, at times, visibility drops to 30 feet, traffic slows to a crawl, and nearly everyone wears masks over their noses and mouths.
In Harbin, a city of 11 million people, government officials recently shut down roads, schools, and the airport when air pollution levels hit 40 times the safe limit set by the World Health Organization (WHO).
During the "airpocalypse" in Beijing earlier this year, the density of small, lung-penetrating particles reached 993 micrograms per cubic meter — a concentration normally not seen outside of forest fires.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers anything above 300 dangerous, and maxes out its scale at 500.
The smog was so thick in Beijing — which English-speaking residents call "Greyjing" — that a factory building burned for three hours before anyone even noticed that it was in flames.

Why is China's air so polluted?
It's the result of two decades of runaway economic development unrestrained by strong air-pollution laws, a dramatic increase in car ownership, and China's overwhelming reliance on coal.
China's cities were filled with bicycles as recently as the 1990s, but thanks to the explosive growth of the middle class, the Chinese now own more than 120 million cars and another 120 million motor vehicles of other kinds.
Fuel standards, set by a government committee stacked with oil industry members, have not kept pace.
Auto emissions, however, account for only about 25 percent of the problem.
Most of the blame rests on coal.
China burns almost as much coal as the rest of the world combined.
Despite making large investments in renewable energy, China still depends on coal to meet nearly 70 percent of its power needs.
While air pollution is almost always bad in northern China, it really soars after cities turn on their coal-fired collective heating systems for the winter "heating season."
Temperature inversions often trap bad air for days or weeks.

What are the health effects?
They're widespread and severe.
In 2010, air pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in China, according to a study.
Hospitals in Harbin reported a 30 percent increase in patients with respiratory problems after air pollution spiked in the city.
Lung cancer rates in China have climbed by 465 percent over the last three decades, despite there being no significant increase in smoking rates.
Scientists say the pollution in northern cities is so severe that 500 million people's lives will be shortened by an average of 5.5 years.

How else is smog hurting China?
It's damaging the country's economy.
In 2012, smog-related economic losses in four major Chinese cities totaled $1.08 billion, according to a study by Greenpeace and Peking University's School of Public Health.
Largely in response to the "airpocalypse," tourism in Beijing has dropped by 50 percent this year, the Beijing Youth Daily reported last week.
The pollution has also hurt efforts by Beijing-based businesses to recruit top foreign talent.
More potential employees are demanding hardship pay for having to deal with the city's awful air quality. With studies connecting prenatal exposure to air pollutants with autism, depression, and long-term lung damage, many foreign and local parents are "second-guessing their living in Beijing," said family physician Richard Saint Cyr, who is based there.

Are Chinese citizens angry?
Yes, and they are increasingly willing to show it.
Chinese netizens this year defied a government ban and began sharing hourly air quality measurements from the U.S. Embassy in downtown Beijing.
Microblogging sites like Sina Weibo have served as forums for citizens to express their frustrations with China's air quality.
"Our requirements aren't high," posted radio reporter Guo Yazhou. "We just want clean food, clean water, and clean air."
The dissatisfaction has given rise to a growing environmental movement, with 30,000 to 50,000 "mass incidents" of protest every year, according to former Communist Party official Chen Jiping.

New invention could offer a solution for those forced to endure China's horrendous air quality. The device is essentially a helmet attached to a portable air filtration system that you carry on your waist. Shown off at the recent East China Fair, the anti-smog helmet is powered by a lithium battery that lasts for eight hours, after which a warning alarm goes off alerting the wearer of his impending exposure to the raw, unfiltered air of Beijing. Air pollution gear was apparently the biggest deal at the fair, and according to reports from Chinese media, the air filtration helmet was extremely popular. We wouldn't be surprised if this helmet-meet-fannypack filter look becomes the standard for Beijing businessmen in coming years, at least until this pollution problem gets solved.
Is the Chinese government listening?
The grumbling has become too loud to ignore.
This year, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang claimed that the country's smog made him "quite upset," while the state-run China Daily bluntly referred to major cities like Beijing as "barely suitable for living."
That is a big change from 2011, when the state media referred to China's choking air pollution with the euphemism "heavy fog."
Now, China says it will spend $817 billion on a plan to drastically cut pollution by 2017.
While that might sound like real progress, provincial officials and state-owned businesses in China have a history of ignoring policies handed down from the central government.
Critics also note that the new air-pollution plan calls for only a 2 percent reduction in coal consumption — the result of the Chinese coal industry's powerful influence.
Tong Zhu, an air pollution specialist who travels between Princeton University and Beijing, sees political infighting in China's giant bureaucracy as the biggest impediment to progress.
"There is technology available" to fix the problem, he told NPR.
"I think as long as there is political willingness, the environmental situation can be drastically improved."

Fashion-forward protection
Not everybody hates the smog.
Companies that make protective face masks are selling millions of them, surpassing records set after the SARS outbreak in 2003.
On the streets of Beijing, it's strange to see someone not wearing a mask, designer Chen Dawei told the South China Morning Post. 
The result has been a boom in fashion-forward face masks adorned with everything from animal prints to counterfeit designer logos.
Wealthy businessmen and government officials are also shelling out for indoor air purifiers, which sometimes sell in upscale showrooms for as much as $3,000.
In the first half of 2013, IQAir, a Swiss company, saw sales of its luxury air purifiers triple in China.
The trend, however, has bred some resentment from average Chinese families.
Their annual income? About $2,100 a year.

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Too Big to Breathe?

What if China meets every criteria of economic success except one: You can’t live there.

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

SHANGHAI — I arrived here on Oct. 19th and was greeted with this news: A combination of cold weather, lack of wind, coal-powered heating and farmers burning off post-harvest debris had created a perfect storm of pollution in the northeastern industrial city of Harbin, home to 10 million people. 

It was so bad that bus drivers were getting lost because the smog-enveloped roads would only permit them to see a few yards ahead. 

Harbin’s official website reportedly warned that “cars with headlights turned on were moving no faster than pedestrians and honking frequently as drivers struggled to see traffic lights meters away.”
The NASA Earth Observatory declared that some Harbin neighborhoods “experienced concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) as high as 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter. 

For comparison, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s air quality standards say PM2.5 should remain below 35 micrograms per cubic meter.” 

This means that Harbin would need a 97 percent reduction in pollution in order to reach the maximum level our government would recommend. 

NASA said Harbin hospitals reported “a 30 percent increase in admissions related to respiratory problems, and several Harbin pharmacies were sold out of pollution face masks.” 

The American jazz singer Patti Austin canceled a concert in smoggy Beijing because of “a severe asthma attack in combination with respiratory infection,” according to the event’s website.
It was no wonder that at a gathering of environmental activists in Shanghai I attended, organized by the Joint U.S.-China Collaboration on Clean Energy, or Juccce, the conversation was dominated by moms and dads talking about where in China to live, when to send their kids outdoors and what food and water to trust. While swapping notes on China’s latest “airpocalypse” a few days later, Hal Harvey, the American chief executive of Energy Innovation, who is working with China’s government to try to get its air quality back under control, asked a powerful question: “What if China meets every criteria of economic success except one: You can’t live there.”
Indeed, what good is it having all those sparkling new buildings if you’re trapped inside them? 

What good is it if China’s rapid growth has enabled four million people in Beijing to own cars, but the traffic never moves? 

What good is it if China’s per capita incomes have risen to a level affording tens of millions of once-poor peasants diets rich in milk and meat, but they can’t trust the labels? 

What good is all that rising G.D.P., if there is no clean air to breathe?
China has built amazing hardware in 30 years — modern cities, roads, airports, ports and telecoms — bringing more people out of poverty faster than any country in the history of the world. 

The Chinese have much to be proud of. 

Every healthy economy, though, depends on a healthy environment. 

China will stall if President Xi Jinping and his government do not now build the software — the institutionalized laws, courts and norms — that can ensure that all this growth will not be undermined by an epidemic of despoiled land and dirty air.
That is easier said than done. 

China is a one-party system with multiple, competing interests inside. 

More enlightened party leaders in Beijing may declare, “We have to clean this up,” but they still have to get the local bosses — whose bonuses depend largely on generating economic growth — “to assert environmental interests at least as strongly as economic interests,” said Harvey. 

That requires assigning real value, and giving real institutional power and weight, to those in the system who believe that it is just as important to protect the commons — air, water, land, food safety — as it is to grow the commons, that it is just as important to have decent ingredients in the pie as it is to grow the pie. 

“At the end of the day,” said Harvey, “if the pie’s not edible, it doesn’t matter how big it is.”
(We can thank our lucky stars that foresighted Americans, starting around 1970, built the institutions to protect our air and water. Next time you hear someone beat up on the E.P.A., send them to Harbin for a week.)
Peggy Liu, the founder of Juccce, is working with Chinese consumers, producers and bureaucrats to define and implement a more sustainable “Chinese dream” that must be different from the American dream of a house, a car, a yard and a throwaway economy for all. 

I think building the institutional support for a sustainable Chinese dream is the most important thing President Xi can do.
“China doesn’t have to have rivers that run bright red with industrial waste, or our lakes and beaches smothered by thick, green algae, or 18,000 dead virused pigs floating down the Huangpu River,” Liu recently wrote. 

“We shouldn’t have to check our air quality index app on our phone every day to determine whether we should let our children outside to play. There shouldn’t be any more Chinese children who, when they go abroad for the first time, ask: ‘Mommy, why is the sky so blue?’... China can be better than this. China needs to carve our own unique way to a thriving life and stable community — a path that is a sustainable path. If we don’t do this soon, we will end up with a China Nightmare.”

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China’s Youngest Lung-Cancer Patient Is Just 8 Years Old, and Pollution Is to Blame

Smog-related cancer deaths in China are soaring. Now children are being affected
By Emily Rauhala / Beijing

A woman and her son wearing masks walk along a road as heavy smog engulfs the city on Oct. 21, 2013 in Changchun, China

To the list of China’s environmental horrors, add one: an 8-year-old with lung cancer. 

Doctors at a hospital in coastal Jiangsu province blamed the girl’s condition on pollution, according to a state media. 

The child, who has not been identified, reportedly lived near a busy road and was exposed to harmful particles and dust. 

She is being called China’s youngest-ever lung-cancer patient.
The news comes amid growing concern about the health effects of air pollution. 

Last month the World Health Organization for the first time classified air pollution as a cause of cancer. 

The agency said air pollution caused 220,000 cancer deaths in 2010 and that more than half of lung-cancer deaths from particulate matter were in China. 

Lung-cancer deaths in China have multiplied more than four times in the past three decades, according to government statistics.
The problem is particularly bad in northern China, where coal-powered heating systems add extra filth to the mix. 

These emissions have shortened the lifespans of Chinese people living north of the Huai River by an average of five years, according to a study published this year by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an American journal. 

In Beijing, the smog-addled capital, cancer is now the leading cause of death, with lung-cancer rates jumping 60% in a period of 10 years.
Chinese urbanites are all too familiar with chest-rattling smog. 

In the northern Chinese city of Harbin last month, the pollution was so thick that kids were granted a “smog day” off school, roads were closed and planes grounded. 

State media said the PM 2.5 reading (which measures the level of dangerous particulate matter in the air) “exceeded” 500. 

A Reuters report put the figure at 1,000, or 40 times higher than what the World Health Organization deems safe. 

Last year, Beijing endured weeks of off-the-chart pollution that English speakers now refer to as the “airpocalypse.”
Perhaps the only upside of the city-shuttering smog is that it has forced the Chinese government to own up to the problem. 

This fall, the government announced a new blueprint for cleaning up the air by 2017. 

The plan calls for 5 billion yuan, or $817 million, to fight pollution. 

There will also be color-coded emergency measures for bad pollution days in Beijing. 

On red days, for instance, half the city’s cars will be idled and schools closed. 

Under a code orange, factories will slow and activities like fireworks and outdoor barbecues will be restricted.
These plans are better than nothing, but many wonder why the government hasn’t done more to keep people safe. 

After news of the 8-year-old’s diagnosis broke, hundreds of people commented on the story, wishing the child luck and expressing their own fears about living in a region where the air kills.
Channeling the sentiment of many here, one reader invoked a Chinese idiom: “Hao hao xuexi, tian tian xiang shang,” or, roughly, “Study hard and make progress every day.” 

Parents and teachers have been saying it for years, urging children to work harder, do better. 

But to this old phrase, they added a second bit of advice that reflects the dark mood as the country heads into another toxic winter: “Study hard and make progress every day,” they wrote. 

“And then leave China.”

NASA snaps pics of China's 'Airpocalypse' pollution disaster

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China Is Choking on Its Success

Walking the streets of Beijing, it’s hard not to feel like you are trapped in an airport smoking lounge. The only tourists heading to Beijing in the years ahead will be adventure seekers donning gas masks.

By William Pesek 

Walking through Beijing’s Tiananmen Square last week, a German family of five surrounded me, all wearing large face masks and sunglasses. 

They weren’t robbing me, just asking me to take their photo. 

When I yelled the customary “Say ‘cheese,’” the dad joked: “We are smiling under here.”
Only China’s pollution bubble is no laughing matter, and tourists tell the story. 

Thanks to extreme air pollution, foreign arrivals plunged by roughly 50 percent in the first three-quarters of the year. 

Beijing could see even fewer visitors to the Forbidden City, the Great Wall and the famous square dominated by a painting of Mao Zedong thanks to images of acrid smog that have been beaming around the globe.
The timing doesn’t help. 

Jokes about renaming the city “Grayjing” or “Beige-jing” coincide with the Communist Party’s much-anticipated Third Plenum meeting Nov. 9-12. 

In a more democratic system, that might increase the urgency to act boldly to address a bad-air crisis that’s literally impossible not to see. 

But early signals aren’t encouraging. 

News media leaks have the more than 200 members of the party’s Central Committee crafting a vague blueprint for readjusting China’s economic structure. 

Nowhere are there hints the plan will do what China really needs to do: Ban coal.

China’s Crisis
The conventional wisdom is that China will eventually get serious about the environment, and when it does, the skies will turn blue before we know it. 

This view finds comfort in the experiences of the U.K. and the U.S. and concludes that Beijing’s toxic-air challenge pales in comparison with London’s back in the days of Charles Dickens. 

But what if the comparison is a false one? 

What if China’s crisis is different and harder to reverse?
Neither London in the 1850s or 1950s nor Pennsylvania in the 1940s was at the mercy of a paranoid authoritarian government whose legitimacy relies on 8 percent growth. 

Case studies of the past weren’t as linearly reliant on manufacturing. 

They weren’t dealing with urbanization anywhere near the scale of modern-day China. 

They didn’t rely on huge overseas investment predicated partly on the ability to pollute freely. 

Large numbers of their politicians weren’t becoming multimillionaires from the existing system.
China is entering completely uncharted territory -- navigating the demands of a newly vocal middle class without the democratic and civil institutions that helped Japan and the U.S. clean up environmental damage in the 1970s. 

It’s also doing so with higher levels of corruption.
The party is playing with fire. 

Anger over pollution has replaced land grabs as the primary cause of social unrest. 

The last 12 months have seen a sharp increase in protests against chemical plants and oil refineries. 

Fewer than 1 percent of China’s 500 largest cities meet the World Health Organization’s air-quality standards, while seven are ranked among the 10 most polluted in the world. 

Walking the streets of Beijing, it’s hard not to feel like you are trapped in an airport smoking lounge.
As China chokes on its success, the solution is obvious: Phase out the use of coal immediately. 

Flush with $3.7 trillion of currency reserves, China could finance a transition to natural gas. 

Doing so requires political will of the kind that neither President Xi Jinping nor Premier Li Keqiang has displayed. 

When China does make the transition away from coal, the economy will slow significantly in ways that would damage the state-owned enterprises that dominate the economy and enrich the Communist Party and its cronies.

Embarrassing Year

China’s new leaders are acting in other ways. 

A series of embarrassments this year -- not least of them thousands of dead pigs floating in the Huangpu River near Shanghai and myriad food-contamination scandals -- and the increased frequency of protests leave them little choice. 

In August, China promised to spend the equivalent of the gross domestic product of Singapore, or about $275 billion, to improve air quality.
“Of course, the country continues to be an investment destination and expats will come here in numbers, but it is definitely harder to sell Beijing as a posting,” says Kobus van der Wath, founder of the Beijing Axis, an international advisory firm. 

“Also, the level of dissatisfaction among Chinese is very high at the times when pollution is at its worst.”
But there’s little sign China understands the extent to which bad air is imperiling investment. 

Many of the government’s ideas about cleaning up first-tier cities such as Beijing involve moving coal-burning plants toward Shanxi province and inner Mongolia -- in other words, redistributing pollution to less populated areas. 

Better emissions standards are vital, too. 

In 2012 alone, China added more cars than the total number that plied its roads in 1999.
Once the U.K. and U.S. got serious about reducing carbon emissions, the transition away from coal took a few decades. 

But China doesn’t have decades. 

So Beijing can rail against the foreign media for exaggerating its gray air. 

It can pretend wind turbines, solar farms and other renewables alone will do the trick. 

But China should do the inevitable and curb coal use today. 

Otherwise, the only tourists heading to Beijing in the years ahead will be adventure seekers donning gas masks.

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Beautiful China tourism pitch misfires amid smog

"When you have all the stories about the pollution, and the air pollution in particular, people are not going to buy the myth that China is beautiful." -- Tourism expert

The Associated Press

What a wonderful world

Forget all the headlines about eye-watering pollution in Beijing and Shanghai -- the Middle Kingdom's latest tourism slogan invites visitors to "Beautiful China."
Adorning buses and trains in cities such as London, the international marketing effort has been derided as particularly inept at a time when record-busting smog has drawn attention to the environmental and health costs of China's unfettered industrialization.
Like this year's typically clunky theme for visitors "China Ocean Tourism Year," the slogan highlights the tin ear of an industry that has ridden the coattails of China's rapid economic growth and increased global prominence but failed to keep up with international travel trends.
"Beauty can be looked at in many different ways, but when you have all the stories about the pollution, and the air pollution in particular, people are not going to buy the fact that China is 100 percent beautiful," said Alastair Morrison, a Beijing-based expert in tourism destination marketing and development.
China's tourism industry has grown at a fast pace since the country began free market-style economic reforms three decades ago. 

In 2011, travel and tourism generated $644 billion, or more than 9 percent of China's GDP, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council, mostly propelled by its huge domestic market of 1.1 billion people.
China is also the world's third most visited country after France and the U.S.

Despite that status, the numbers are less significant economically than domestic tourism. 

On top of that, the growth in foreign tourists has lagged world averages.
According to the World Tourism Organization, whose data is based on national sources, the average growth rate in overnight visitors worldwide was 2.8 percent from 2008 to 2012. 

The average growth rate in China was 2.1 percent.
And in the first nine months of this year, a period during which China's image as a destination has been tainted by worsening air pollution and unprecedented coverage of it, foreign overnight visitors dropped 7 percent to 15 million people.
"For a destination like China, which is a large country that many foreigners have not been to, and with the interest in China, you would expect above average growth rates," said Morrison. 

"You have to question what's going on."
Some point to unsophisticated marketing as an explanation.
Whereas tourism offices all over the world use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, Chinese tourism authorities stick with what they know: trade shows and magazine advertising.
They are fond of using wordy theme years to promote China, having used one annually since its "Friendly Sightseeing Year" of 1992. 

The busy looking website of the national tourism body has been likened to a company newsletter.
"Most government tourism administrations in China prefer the traditional way of promotion to attract foreigners, such as holding promotions in targeted places overseas," said Wang Sheng, assistant general manager at D & J Global Communications. 

"But this practice has one major shortcoming in that they are still not close enough to the potential individual customer."
Some local tourism authorities recognize the problem and are leading the way in changing their strategy to attract foreign tourists, particularly those from Europe and North America.
The tourism authority in Shandong province, home of Confucius' birthplace and Tsingtao beer, has enlisted Google Inc. to act as a digital consultant to improve its advertising reach. 

Google helped them set up a channel on YouTube and increase their adverts' visibility alongside search results and on its partner websites.

It also suggests advertising ideas and online designs.
Sun Shue, director of the international tourism marketing department at Shandong Tourism Administration, said they were working with Google to target primarily the European and American markets to make their inbound tourism market more balanced.
Nearly half of inbound tourists to Shandong on the eastern coast come from regional neighbors Japan and South Korea, with Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia also providing many visitors, she said. 

European visitors are currently few in number and this structure is "not conducive to long-term stable growth," she said.
Hangzhou city's tourism office has a Facebook page and a website in several languages including English and German. 

The city's marketing and the image of Hangzhou's scenic West Lake has extended to dozens of buses and taxis in four European capitals and Tokyo and Seoul. 

This year, Hangzhou city has mainly targeted Britain, France, Germany and the United States and says it works with local PR companies to promote its brand.
Other problems in the industry are organizational.
Tour operators abroad complain that instead of cooperating with them to draw up cultural, historical and other themed itineraries, which is customary in the global industry, Chinese tourism authorities prefer to market directly to foreigners through travel magazines and other media.
Terry Dale, president and CEO of the United States Tour Operators Association, said it was a "cumbersome process" dealing with Chinese tourism authorities.
The national tourism body unveiled its new logo and tagline "Beautiful China" in February -- a square blue logo with "Beautiful China" written in English and Chinese. 

It is competing with South Korea's use of "Gangnam Style" star Psy as the face of its tourism adverts abroad, and is expected to be discussed at this week's China International Travel Mart in south China, one of the country's most influential travel industry events. 

The China National Tourism Administration declined to be interviewed.
On a recent day, tourists on a hill overlooking the Forbidden City imperial palace in Beijing said they thought the slogan could have been more sophisticated.
"Well indeed China is beautiful, that's what we have seen for the last few days, yet I find it a little bit general because there have been a lot of beautiful places we have been to," said backpacker Maciek Pielok, 26, from Naleczow in Poland.
"I guess that you could even call it Epic China or the oldest country in the world, something like that."

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‘Airpocalypse’ Hits Harbin, Closing Schools

By MIA LI

Harbin’s landmark San Sophia church was barely visible Monday as heavy pollution forced the closure of schools and highways.

School was canceled and traffic was nearly paralyzed in the northeast Chinese city of Harbin on Monday as off-the-charts pollution dropped visibility to less than 10 meters in parts of the provincial capital.
A dark, gray cloud that the local weather bureau described as “heavy fog” has shrouded the city of 10 million since Thursday, but the smoke thickened significantly on Sunday, soon after the government turned on the coal-powered municipal heating system for the winter.
“You can’t see your own fingers in front of you,” the city’s official news site explained helpfully.

In the same vein, a resident of Harbin commented on Sina Weibo, the popular microblog platform, “You can hear the person you are talking to, but not see him.” 

Another resident added that he couldn’t see the person he was holding hands with.
The Harbin government reported an air quality index (AQI) score of 500, the highest possible reading, with some neighborhoods posting concentrations of PM2.5 — fine particulate matter that are 2.5 microns in diameter or smaller and especially harmful to health — as high as 1,000 milligrams per cubic meter, according to the China News Service.
(By comparison, the air quality index in New York was 41 on Monday morning.)
The Chinese government describes air with an AQI between 301 and 500 as “heavily polluted” and urges people to refrain from exercising outdoors; the elderly and other vulnerable populations are supposed to stay indoors entirely. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency uses a similar index that labels any reading between 301 and 500 as “hazardous.”
Both scales reach their limit at 500, leaving creative citizens of polluted cities to come up with their own labels when the air gets worse. 

Foreign residents in Beijing declared an “airpocalpyse” last January when the U.S. Embassy reported an AQI equivalent of 755, with a PM2.5 concentration of 866 milligrams per cubic meter. 

The World Health Organization has standards that judge a score above 500 to be more than 20 times the level of particulate matter in the air deemed safe.
On Monday, people in Harbin were covering their heads and mouths with scarves and masks to ward off the choking smell in the air. 

Despite government warnings to stay home, cars with headlights turned on were moving no faster than pedestrians and honking frequently as drivers struggled to see traffic lights meters away, the city’s official news site said.
At an emergency meeting called at 6 a.m., the authorities decided to close all schools and kindergartens, the report said. 

The local police also shut several highways at 7 a.m., but not before the smog caused two pile-ups, which left one truck driver injured, the official Xinhua news agency reported. (Nearby Jilin Province also reported 14 road accidents on Sunday night; the authorities there issued a red alert for pollution Monday morning.)
The pollution in Harbin has caused a 30 percent surge in hospital admissions of patients with respiratory problems, according to the local news media. 

Residents have been told by doctors to wear masks and eat pears, a fruit commonly believed in northern China to help heal lungs.
The city weather bureau blamed the pollution on three factors: a lack of wind; local farms burning corn leaves and stalks after the harvest; and the start of the municipal central heating system, which provides heat to millions of homes and offices and relies on large coal-burning boilers across the city.
The system pumps hot water into radiators and is supposed to heat residences to at least 18 degrees Celsius (64 degrees Fahrenheit). 

But Harbin, located not far from the Russian border in Heilongjiang Province, is one of China’s coldest cities, and its coal-dependent heating system means it must choose each year between heat and clean air.
Harbin has been battling air pollution for years, destroying hundreds of smaller boilers, banning the use of high-sulfur coal, and adopting cleaner fuel standards for cars. 

On Monday, the city dispatched environmental protection personnel to conduct inspections of factory smokestacks, traffic police to perform spot checks of motor vehicle emissions, and village officials to stop farmers from burning corn waste.
Temperatures are forecast to drop to the freezing point this week, but the local weather bureau said the cold front could also bring rain that could clear out some of the pollution.
In the meantime, residents were left comparing the air to something out of a horror film. 

Said an Internet user going by the screen name Han Doudou, “If you think this is the movie set for Silent Hill, Resident Evil or The Walking Dead, you are wrong — this is Harbin.”

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My Shocking Train Ride Through the Heart of China’s “Airpocalypse”

By James West

Power plant stacks tower over a town in China's coal country. 

People write about China's growth so much it's daunting to wring out something new. 

But—wow—when you see it for the first time in a few years, it still delivers one hell of a punch.
I lived in China for a year before the Beijing's 2008 Olympics (a kind of development event horizon in China’s history, towards which the whole country hurtled), and I've been back regularly enough to marvel at changes first hand.
But I have never before been as dumbfounded as during a train ride this week from Beijing through a swathe of China’s northeast coal belt. 

My colleague Jaeah Lee and I were whisked away from the capital on rails that carry sleek new bullet trains (in just two years, China will have completed 18,000 kilometers (11,200 miles) of high-speed railway lines, leaving the US limping). 

We zoom at 300 kilometers (186 miles) per hour through unabated upheaval.
The scene could be a panel from a graphic novel. 

For hours, not a single bird stirred around the hundreds of empty skyscrapers that hang lifeless over farms; they will house the newly urbanized from China's rural areas. 

Every bit of the shadowy landscape in China's northeast has been pressed into the service of an all-pervasive industry: power generation. 

China continues to be the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, according to the World Resources Institute. It's clear to me how: where one coal power plant stops, another begins. 

A thick brown air blows and for a moment the trees look like nature's very own protestors, shaking their fists at the sky (the human variety are strictly banned—though public outrage finally forced the government to publish air quality data in 2012).
"I feel weak and powerless," a young filmmaker surnamed Yang told me later in a Xi'an cafe when I asked him about climate change and pollution. 

"I've seen so many pioneering and brave people dare to stand up, only to be punished."
This year's tipping-point event for the public debate, dubbed by expats as "airpocalypse," covered 2.7 million square kilometers of the country with a pall of smog and impacted more than 600 million people. 

We pass through Zhengzhou, ranked among the four worst cities in China for air pollution; the city consistently registers levels well over China's official scale for what's called PM2.5—dangerous tiny particles from coal-burning and industry. 

In the first half of this year, China's levels of these particles were three-times worse than levels advised by the World Health Organization. 

It's this kind of air pollution that contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in China in 2010, researchers say. 

My Beijing friends will call me a wimp, but I've developed a persistent cough these last few days. 

It's hard to breathe.
"I think the air quality is awful all around the country," a Chinese man surnamed Liang tells me (like the filmmaker, he didn't want to give his full name). 

"For average citizens, there are not many things we can do about it... We are not yet a democracy. Average people can only try to live their own lives."
According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released Friday, greenhouse gas levels are now higher than at any point in "at least the last 800,000" years. 

With a quarter of global carbon dioxide emissions now coming from China, the world's most populous country will have an outsized influence on the future of climate change. 

That didn't go unnoticed at the IPCC release in Stockholm, Friday. 

"If China can mind its business well, it will be a great contribution to the world," said report co-chair Dahe Qin, speaking in Chinese in response to a question from a Chinese reporter, according to a translator.
There are some encouraging signs of change. 

The new government under Xi Jinping is finally taking seriously the threat of coal to China's air: it's simply untenable for any government, let alone one that depends so fundamentally on suppressing unrest, to ignore. This month, Beijing committed to progressively shut down its coal plants inside the city within four years, according to official plans that also reduce burning in China's coal-producing provinces. 

Presidents Obama and Xi Jinping have agreed to curb the use of hydrofluorocarbons, which are used in refrigerants, in a move that could lead to a strengthening of the Montreal Protocol as an international climate agreement. 

And China has sunk millions into solar development, as you can see in the graph below, outpacing the US dollar-for-dollar in renewable energy investment, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. 

China's National Development and Reform Commission—which looks after big-picture planning—announced earlier this year that renewable energy investments in the country could total $294 billion in the five years ending in 2015. 

This includes the incredible growth of 22 percent from 2011 to 2012. 

A closer look at the data shows the US has a lot of catching up to do if it wants to compete with the world's biggest clean energy player.

But it's hard to have confidence staring out the window of this railroad car. 

The difference between inside our modern train and the turbulent outside world couldn't be greater. 

Inside is quiet, air-conditioned and pleasurably fast. 

Outside, the environmental crisis continues to unfold before our eyes. 

It's a sense of powerless shared by Chinese people we speak to.
"Under an ironfisted and strong government, what we normal people can do to change the country is very limited," said Yang, the filmmaker. 

"That's why I feel sad and disappointed."

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