Winter Heating or Clean Air? Unintended Impacts of China's Huai River Policy

Abstract

Air quality in China is notoriously poor. Ambient concentrations of Total Suspended Particulates (TSP) 1981-1993 were more than double China’s National Annual Mean Ambient Air Quality Standard of 200 mg/m-3 (Xiaohui Bi et al., 2007) and five times the level that prevailed in the U.S. before passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970. Further, it is frequently claimed that air quality is especially poor in northern Chinese cites. For example, following a career in the southern city of Shanghai, Prime Minister Zhu Rongi quipped in 1999: “If I work in your Beijing [in northern China], I would shorten my life at least five years” (The Economist, 2004, pp. 55-57).