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Hanchen Liu

Dr. Tabitha Clark

First Year Writing

27 October 2021

Profile Assignment: Storytelling with Purpose

Profile of air pollution in Beijing

An aerial view of a small part of the Great Wall of China in Beijing (Friedman)

When it comes to Beijing, Peking Duck and the Great Wall can always appear in people’s

mind. In fact, Beijing has far more interesting things than these for us to explore. As the capital

of the People’s Republic of China, which is currently the largest developing country in the world,

Beijing is changing at a breathless pace in all aspects. For example, in recent decades, Beijing

has gained a lot of benefits from industrialization, such as the soaring of resident income, the

improvement of inhabitants’ life quality, and the development of transportation system. However,

beside taking these advantages, Beijing suffered from side effect of industrialization a lot (The
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World Bank). Right now, air pollution, which is mainly caused by industrialization, has become

one of the most serious problem of Beijing. Almost all residents in Beijing has been aware that

“the dominant color of the sky” in Beijing is changing from blue to gray or even white; more and

more people choose to wear on their face masks when they are walking on the street; the rhythm

of people’s daily life, work, and study is disturbed because of the abnormal air quality.

Speaking of the issue of air pollution in Beijing, its process of industrialization has to be

mentioned. In 1978, China launched the reform and opening-up policy under the leadership of

Deng Xiaoping. (Preen) This policy stimulated the industrialization of China to a large extent. As

one of the biggest cities in China, by taking the advantage of this policy. Beijing experienced a

rapid growth of its industrial output as well as its economy. However, at the time it seems that

everything went well, Beijing’s air quality was going from bad to worse and more and more

people began to suffer from all kinds of diseases caused by air pollution. As we all know, it is

inevitable for any industrial production to emit smoke, dust, and multiple kinds of harmful gases,

which is very detrimental to human, especially its respiratory system. For example, burning coals

is one of the major energy source of industrial production in China. Unfortunately, emissions

from burning coals has the worst health impact among any source of air pollution and results in

hundreds of thousands of premature death in China every year. (Wong) Although everybody do

know that how harmful is the emissions brought by industrial production, the amount of

production is not limited because of China’s national strategy of growing economy. Besides,

even if there is some ways to treat harmful emissions, it indeed increase the cost of industrial

companies. Also, the issue of treating harmful emissions has long been ignored by the

governments at all levels. As a result, almost no companies will spend their own money to treat

harmful emissions if there is no relevant laws and regulations issued by the governments.
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In the photo, the China Central Television (CCTV) Building in Beijing as seen from Asian Development Bank’s Office under the smog (Kan)

Unfortunately, Beijing is not the only victim of air pollution. For instance, in New Delhi,

the capital of India, approximately 54,000 people were killed because of the air pollution. (Arora)

In Karachi, the biggest city of Pakistan, 35 percent of its residents are suffering from multiple

kinds of ailments related to their hearts, lungs, eyes, and skins due to the air pollution. (Jones)

Besides these cities from developing countries, some famous cities from developed countries are

also once hurt by air pollution when they were experiencing industrialization process. The Great

Smog of 1952 in London in a good example. Between 05 December 1952 to 09 December 1952,

London was cloaked under the thick smog because of industrial emissions from factories and

burning coals from residents’ houses. It is generally believed that the terrifying smog directly

killed at least 4,000 people. (Klein) Also, in 20th century, the United States was once hurt by

Donora smog incident and Los Angeles smog.

Obviously, air pollution is no longer a local problem of a few cities of a few countries.

Instead, it has become one of the most serious threats to people from all over the world. The

World Health Organization stated that 92% of global population are breathing polluted air (BBC),
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which is causing millions of premature death in the world annually. These are indeed horrible

numbers. Besides, the World Bank announced that air pollution cause approximately 5.11 trillion

dollars of welfare losses of global economy every year, (UN Sustainable Development Goals),

which strongly proved that developing economy by paying the price of hurting the environment

is completely not applicable. To sum up, it is high time that people should work together to

reduce air pollution in order to protect the Earth and the health of themselves.

In this situation, some global organizations have put into action to deal with air pollution.

For example, the general assembly of the United Nations have decided to set 07 September as

the International Day of Clean Air and create the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to

appeal to people around the world to participate in the action of reducing air pollution. In

addition, the World Health Organization provided some suggestions to deal with air pollution,

including but not limited to developing clean technologies to reduce industrial emissions,

appealing residents to consider public transportation system and low-emission vehicles instead of

traditional vehicles, and increasing the use of renewable combustion-free power sources. (World

Health Organization).

Fortunately, by taking the advice of these global organizations, the situation of air

pollution in some cities have shown a declining trend. For instance, the government of Beijing

have issued related policies to encourage residents’ purchase of new energy vehicles and usage

of public transportation system like bus and subway, and thus the air quality have improved in

recent few years. (Neill) However, these are far from being adequate to this global issue. As

mentioned above, Beijing is not the only victim of air pollution. Consequently, Beijing is not the

only city which is responsible to reduce the air pollution. Instead, worldwide cooperation is the

most effective and possible way to solve the problem of air pollution.
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Works Cited

“Ambient (outdoor) air pollution”. World Health Organization, 22 Sept. 2021.

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(outdoor)-air-quality-and-

health

Arora, Neha. “Air pollution led to around 54,000 premature deaths in New Delhi in 2020 -study”.

Thomson Reuters Foundation News, 18 Feb. 2021.

https://news.trust.org/item/20210218144248-kdhrj

“China: Fighting Air Pollution and Climate Change through Clean Energy Financing.” The

World Bank, 21 Jun. 2020.

https://www.worldbank.org/en/results/2020/06/21/china-fighting-air-pollution-and-

climate-change-through-clean-energy-financing

Friedman, Sophie. “Great Wall of China”. Photograph. (n.d.)

https://www.afar.com/places/china-lanzhou-2-1

Jones, Brian H. “Around Rakaposhi: Life Among Muslims in Northern Pakistan”. Smashwords,

Inc. 5 Jun. 2010.

https://books.google.com/books?id=O7GPWbu8XKgC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage

&q&f=false

Kan, Lei. “People's Republic of China: Air Pollution in Beijing”. Photograph. 12 Mar. 2015.

https://www.adb.org/features/air-pollution-beijing-adb-s-take

Klein, Christopher. “The Great Smog of 1952”. History.com, 6 Dec. 2012.

https://www.history.com/news/the-killer-fog-that-blanketed-london-60-years-ago

Neill, Pippa. “Beijing’s air quality has improved significantly, report says”. AirQualityNews, 26

Mar. 2021.
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https://airqualitynews.com/2021/03/26/beijings-air-quality-has-improved-significantly-

says-report/

Preen, Mark. “Economic Reform in China: Current Progress and Future Prospects”. China

Briefing, 3 Apr. 2019.

https://www.china-briefing.com/news/economic-reform-china-opening-up-future-

prospects/

“Polluted air affects 92% of global population, says WHO”. BBC News, 27 Sept. 2016.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-37483616

“United Nations announces 2019 Climate Action Summit ‘Clean Air Initiative’, calls on

governments at all levels to join”. UN Sustainable Development Goals, 23 Jul. 2019.

https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/07/clean-air-initiative-calls-

climate-action/

Wong, Edward. “Coal Burning Causes the Most Air Pollution Deaths in China, Study Finds.”

The New York Times, 17 Aug. 2016.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/world/asia/china-coal-health-smog-pollution.html