Blue Skies Over Beijing

Beijing, China used to suffer from pretty serious air pollution – but to its credit, it has taken aggressive steps to tackle the problem. 

And "Beijing blue" appears to have become the new normal for the Chinese capital as the country successfully achieved its phased goals in curbing pollution. 

It is said that the number of days with heavy air pollution in Beijing in 2020 was 10, while in 2015 it was 43, dropping by nearly 80 percent. 

It’s not only in Beijing but in other Chinese cities too. Chinese Minister of Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu said on Wednesday that the proportion of days with good air quality in cities at prefecture-level and above across the country reached 87 percent in 2020, an increase of 5.8 percentage points from that in 2015. And the figure is 2.5 percentage points higher than the target of the 13th Five-Year Plan, which speaks well of the country’s quest to improve its air quality. 

In fact, among China's 337 cities, 202 met the air quality standard in 2020, accounting for 59.9 percent, 13.3 percent higher than the year before, according to the China Environment Report 2020 published by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment in May. 

That’s not the only good news from China! 

In the same Wednesday edition of the Global Times, increased sightings of wildlife have been reported. And it must be said that this is due to China making good progress with regard to biodiversity conservation, particularly wildlife protection.

 

In the northeast part of the country, a whale shark (Scientific name: Rhincodon typus) made its debut in the waters near a small town on Zhangzi Island in Dalian, northeast China's Liaoning Province. 

In China, whale sharks are listed as a second-class protected animal. They are normally sighted throughout Chinese waters in the South China Sea, East China Sea and the Yellow Sea – yet rarely appear in North China's Bohai Sea, where the said island is located. 

And on Tuesday, China Central Television released a video of more than 40 golden snub-nosed monkeys (Scientific name: Rhinopithecus roxellana) frolicking around an administration building in a national park in Dujiangyan, southwest China's Sichuan Province on Monday morning. 

According to park employees, it is "very rare" for such national first-class protected animals to appear in places with high levels of human activity. 

Besides these two appearances, Siberian tigers (Scientific name: Panthera tigris altaica) in northeast China and an elephant herd's long trek across southwest China have made headlines too. 

Sun Quanhui, a scientist at World Animal Protection, told the Global Times on Wednesday: “All of this means that China's ecosystem is improving”. 

"Yet the frequency of these appearances means that we have to solve another problem: How to maintain harmony between wild animals and human beings. A system needs to be put into place to avoid conflict", he cautioned. 

In any case, good job, China!