Due to the cold weather in northern China, the Chinese government does not rule out a wave of pollution that might hit Beijing during the Olympics. The authorities announce emergency measures.
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The sky has remained blue and completely clear in Beijing since the start of the Winter Olympics Friday, February 4, but pollution might return above the Chinese capital. In any case, this is what the authorities fear, who are preparing to ask certain industries to reduce their pace for the duration of the tests.
When the city of Beijing won the Winter Games in 2015, the Chinese capital declared a real war on pollution. Dozens of coal-fired power plants have been closed and relocated. As the games approached last summer, several heavy industries were told to cut production in half and 25 million homes in the north of the country saw their coal stoves replaced with cleaner burners.
This work has paid off. Air quality in Beijing, which was unbreathable in 2014, has improved markedly. But with the earlier cold spell currently hitting northern China, coal consumption is exploding and the authorities fear an episode of pollution in Beijing during the Olympics. The risk is to see competitions take place under a thick fog, scenes that are obviously very bad for the image of the country.
In this context, the government says it is ready to take emergency measures around the Olympic sites. Liu Youbin, one of the spokespersons for the Chinese Ministry of the Environment, explained on January 24 that “local governments in Beijing, Hebei and other neighboring provinces and municipalities are authorized, by decision of the National People’s Congress, to take necessary measures during the Olympics, to impose temporary restrictions on the most polluting enterprises , at least those that have a relatively low economic impact”. The Chinese government guarantees that these restrictions will not have consequences for the population with power and heating cuts, as was the case in the fall of 2021.
