Price to pay for a cleaner Beijing
China Daily  Updated: 2005-04-05 06:40

It is a welcome sign that Beijing now puts environmental concern before industrial development.

Pei Chenghu, deputy director of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, recently indicated that the capital will put a check on the use of vehicles to protect the city's air quality.

Measures the city might adopt to control air pollution include stricter emission requirements and higher parking fees in downtown areas.

Such efforts clearly demonstrate Beijing's resolution to embrace a holistic approach in fighting air pollution.

The booming automobile industry has been made a pillar of many local economies, including Beijing's. Catering to Chinese consumers' appetite for driving, many municipal governments have given a free rein to car use to underpin the rapid expansion of automakers across the country.

However, as explosive growth in the number of motor vehicles increasingly worsens air quality in major Chinese cities, public calls for a check on excessive auto use become louder and louder.

This is particularly the case in Beijing, which has the largest number of vehicles on its roads in the country. As the host of the 2008 Olympic Games, Beijing has also promised to make the event a "green" one.

To improve its air quality, Beijing is set to move the Shougang Group - an iron and steel giant - out of the city. The industrial base is the largest polluter in Beijing. Both the cost of its removal and the loss of local revenue are huge, but environmental costs resulting from the steel giant are definitely more expensive. So the city has made the decision to do away with it.

However, as to the other major source of air pollution, car emissions, it is much more difficult to find a once-and-for-all solution. Given the integration of the automobile industry with many other sectors of local economies and the popularity of driving, any limit on the use of cars could risk hindering industrial development and spark complaints from drivers.

The latest measures serve as a good starting point in reducing car-related air pollution.

The introduction of the Euro IV standard, an air quality benchmark, will force carmakers to strengthen vehicle emission control on the supply side. And price leverages, like differential parking fees, can persuade drivers to use their cars more prudently.

Of course, such measures are no panacea for all the problems concerning urban traffic and air pollution.

Beijing is likely to adopt the Euro III emissions standard this year. Prompt adoption of an even higher emission standard may add too much to car-users' costs.

On the other hand, higher parking fees may ease traffic jams in downtown areas, but will do little in reducing overall uses of cars and thus vehicle emissions in the absence of a well-developed public transport system.

Yet these problems do not negate the necessity of implementing the above-mentioned measures. The sooner they are put into place, the sooner Beijing will have cleaner skies.

(China Daily 04/05/2005 page6)

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