Fair question.

My impression here in Beijing is that people are highly dissatisfied with the pollution situation. They don't want lung cancer and they don't want their kids breathing this crap.

That being said, the government is taking steps to address the issue. Specifically, due to an outcry on Weibo last year about having to get PM2.5 numbers from the US embassy's twitter feed and iPhone app (twitter is blocked, but screenshots of the iPhone app were pasted on weibo), the government here has started reporting pollution numbers in major cities around the country. So there's reporting now.

Second, they've forced the state-owned oil companies to retool to start outputting cleaner gasoline, moved big polluting industry out of the cities (steel plants, etc.), closed down barbecue pits, ended the sale of some of the more polluting coal briquettes that used to be common, and are trying to get construction sites to keep the dust down.

All of those steps are helping, but not reversing the trend (so far as I can tell or have heard). There is a push to move from coal-burning power plants to gas-powered power plants, but they need to find the gas (via fracking or other means).

Is there an outcry? There are certainly people posting about the pollution on Weibo, which is China's twitter. There are also plenty of people emigrating to the US, if they can afford it (voting with their feet, even if they can't vote here). But I think for people to do more than that, they'd need to see the government just not giving a damn. So perhaps the attitude is 'wait and see'?

Hope this helps.

By the way, one of my Beijing buddies said of the Shanghai smog: "In Beijing, we call this Tuesday."

I also think I read that more than 50% of the nuclear plants currently being built are in China. That is a big way that they will eventually combat this problem.

> I also think I read that more than 50% of the nuclear plants currently being built are in China. That is a big way that they will eventually combat this problem.

Yes, China has 40 GWe of nuclear power coming on-line in the next 5 years. The United States currently has 97 GWe of nuclear capacity, and China currently has 13 GWe.

But China is also building 40 GWe of coal plants each year.

This is what happens when you take 500 million peasants and turn them into urban factory workers within a period of 30 years. Demand grows so quickly that even the world's largest nuclear plant construction program will only account for a fraction of demand growth.

According to http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/pdf/global_coal_risk_..., they plan to build 'only' about 40% of new coal plant capacity, with India taking another 35%.

So, not that that matters for the absolute pollution, but if that >50% is correct, their mix will improve.

Also, they try to build those plants far away from cities. That, hopefully, will spread pollution.

That PDF also states that those plans may not be implemented, as a) coal companies lose money in China because the government fixed electricity prices and b) the public doesn't want their pollution.

On the negative side, their absolute pollution will likely go up, and the gap with the western world will go up even more (elsewhere, new coal plants will often replace older, more polluting ones)

That is disheartening. For us, that is.

How does that 50% stack up against how much power they use compared to all other countries that have nuclear power available to them? Wikipedia has China's power usage in 2008 as just below the US's, but growing much faster. It also has much more of their power coming from coal in 2011 (46%, to 13%). It makes sense to me that China would be expanding their nuclear power faster than anybody else right now. Of course it would be nice if we would pick up the pace too...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption

Right, I have no issues with China using nuclear, it just highlights how much we aren't.

Cheer up, we are building some too; there are 4 nuclear plants under construction at present, which are the first new additions to the US nuclear fleet in 30 years: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/business/energy-environmen...

No, you seem to be misinformed.

Somehow your comment manages to be both smugly self-assured and also clear as mud. Bravo!

>closed down barbecue pits

Mind explaining what those are?

I am guessing coal/charcoal/wood fired street food vendors. I doubt a yearly family picnic contributes enough to worry about.

I'm guessing public barbecues

Yes, I guess 'barbecue pit' isn't a good choice of words. I was referring to the street vendors who sell barbecue meat, etc. The ones near my home seem to be shut down.

http://inhabitat.com/chinese-government-bans-outdoor-bbqs-in...

I think I accidentally down voted this great post, sorry! Wish I could change it like on Stack Overflow.

No problem. We're all friends here ;)

I'm not local but I have friends there. The Chinese were accepting of the pollution at first because of the success they were experiencing on a world stage. They figured that if the politicians and the higher ups could deal with it, then the ordinary citizen can too. Then the average citizen started realizing that the elite didn't actually have to deal with it because they would buy expensive air purifiers for their homes, cars, and work places. There has been more of an outcry against the pollution that is now causing all forms of health problems as of late and despite the heavily authoritarian rule of the regime, the Chinese government is prudent enough to know that a largely dissatisfied citizenry is always a risk. So the various local and national governments are moving, albeit slowly, to try and reduce their pollution levels.

> I realize that criticism may be somewhat muted given the nature of the PRC government

There's no shame in calling a spade a spade. You correctly perceive that the brutally authoritarian PRC government both suppresses criticism and whitewashes press coverage of environmental problems in the country.

As an aside, discussions with other westerners about China feels to me like having brunch with a couple where everyone knows the husband is cheating on the wife. The natural inclination is to engage in heroic effort to make things seem normal--to map the dysfunctional couple's relationship dynamics to that of a normal couple, all in order to preserve the all-important pretense.

I mean, the problem is that there's a bit of a cultural difference between Americans circa-Industrial Revolution, and the Chinese now. So saying that the Chinese will stand up and protest isn't necessarily true. I don't want to speak for all Chinese, but from what I've read -- please correct me if I'm wrong -- is that there is more of a culture of deference to authority in China. Compare this to Americans, who have a history and pride in rebelling against authority. Now, you might point to China's communist revolution, but realize that with this government came the need for them to propagandize and popularize a love and respect for the government in control, much more so than in the U.S. So back to my original point, protest culture isn't as much of a thing there as it is here, because there's more of a sense of working for the collective good (economic growth of China).

So I'm hoping that there will by outcry, but I think it is unfortunately less likely than it would be in the U.S. due to Chinese culture. I'd also like to here some local insight as well, and I hope I'm proved wrong because it would be awesome if there was a public outcry.

There are astonishing numbers of protests in China every year.[1][2] I also think the culture for factory workers during the industrial revolution was one of deference to authority, and that it took extreme conditions to spur them to protest their conditions.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_and_dissent_in_the_Peop...

[2] http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/02/rising-protests-i...

That's good to hear. My only point about protesting in America was that it's very ingrained in our culture to protest, even for small issues. I didn't really know much about Chinese protesting culture, but it's good to hear they do it in large numbers.

As far as I understand, public unrest is one of the greatest fears of Chinese leadership, hence tight control and censorship. That may speak volumes about the willingness of their public to take control along with protesting (as opposed to the West where protest is seen as a safety valve and therefore encouraged in proscribed forms).

Well, I hope that's true, but I don't know if I necessarily agree with the idea "they have an oppressive government thus they must be able to take control with protesting". It could be that the government feels the need to be this way because they know just how screwed up everything (pollution, persecution, etc.) is, and are oppressive as a safety measure.

...think that's what I said - the oppression is a response to perception of a greater evil of instability. Scratch any country's leadership and you'll get the same kind of result. The question is whether that is justified, and historically seems to be more usually a case of paranoia, micro-management, and control freakery.

There is constant outcry especially since last year. And protest happens daily in China. It's just that normally people stay on particular issues at hand rather than nebular banners such as "small government" etc, for cultural reasons and the protestors' own safety.

My impression is that it has to do with Tiananmen Square (been there, tried that, didn't work) and being complicit in trading off economic advancement for maintaining Communist party rule. Also many government officials directly benefit from economic advancement via bribery/corruption.

> being complicit in trading off economic advancement for maintaining Communist party rule.

I think 'complicit' might be an overstatement here; it's not like you can just go vote for the Democrats in China right?

I really doubt Barack Obama would be the American president today if the real penalties for advocating for the replacement of the Republican Party regime of 2000 had included death, life in a torture camp, similar things for your family, etc.

Agree.There have been some complains and disscussions about air pollution recently. They can easily be found online, whereas you won't find people talking about it or worry about it very much. The way of how Chinese expressing their feelings is far more different than a public outcry. Hence, people are certainly waiting for the action of their government. And, what about those who are so confident and think they will not be the next victim of the air pollution? Was Shanghai one of them who have this thought?

80% of my classmates are in China. There are constant messages about PM level in Shanghai, Beijing in all my classmates' social networks in wechat, renren.

Not yet an outcry, definitively discussions, humors, etc.