Chinese walker

At an afternoon press conference during the International Olympic Committee`s visit last summer, Hein Verbruggen, the Dutch chairman of the committee, described the city`s Olympic preparations as “stunning.” Another official said he had never, in two decades, seen such an organized plan for the Games. Even as a thick haze covered the city, Jiang Xiaoyu, the vice president of the city`s Olympic committee, explained to journalists that pollution would be brought under control, reassurances that were backed by the sanguine visiting officials. Then someone asked about the traffic.

The glow on Mr. Jiang`s face seemed to fade. Mr. Verbruggen skipped a beat before making a carefully worded assessment. “I can imagine it should be a problem for the people who have to plan for the traffic system. It’s an uphill battle for them.” He explained: “The traffic is rather busy.”

For a city that often looks more like a giant car park than a bustling metropolis, “busy” was not only an understatement, but also lacked a certain accuracy – “idle” might have been a better word. Even as Beijing scrambles to pave new roads to sustain a growing automotive yen – 1,000 new cars hit the streets daily – congestion continues to grow. And for the millions of commuters who rely on a highly-burdened subway and bus system, just getting to work can mean a daily struggle against cars, crowds and carcinogens. When Beijing slipped 10 notches to number 14 in a recent quality of life ranking of Chinese cities, bad transportation beat pollution as the biggest complaint. In July, a report by the World Bank slammed Beijing and similar cities for a “piecemeal and ad-hoc” transit planning that was not only wrecking the city`s quality of life but also clogging its economy.

Even upper-level officials – their black sedans not immune to the slow chaos of Beijing`s streets – have abandoned typical understatement. Once the threat of SARS faded in 2004, Beijing mayor Wang Qishan shifted his sights to a much more difficult target: “The contradiction between real estate development and traffic regulations is the biggest problem now facing Beijing,” he said.

With the 2008 Olympics less than a year away, Beijing`s environment has become the organisers` biggest worry. Speaking to CNN, Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, said that poor air quality in the capital could mean endurance events like long-distance cycle races would have to be postponed. Guangzhou newspaper the Southern Daily went as far as to say that if improvements are not made, the Beijing Olympics may be the most polluted ever.

However, the Chinese government is now doing everything within its power to ensure environmental quality for the Games, and the worries may be unnecessary. Starting on August 17, Beijing implemented a four-day restriction on car use. Vehicles with a license plate ending in either an odd or even number were forbidden to enter the city on any one day; the measure was estimated to have kept 1.3 million cars off the road each day. Beijing`s Environmental Protection Monitoring Centre tested the air to see what effect the changes had, and the lessons from this experiment will be applied during the Olympics. Measures on this scale are rare and demonstrate the determination and power of the government.

Moreover, this is only one of the temporary measures planned for the Olympics. Beijing`s Legal Daily reported that in the two months before the Games some factories will be forced to stop production, building sites will cease work and even Beijing`s surrounding provinces of Shanxi, Tianjin, Hebei and Inner Mongolia will have to bring air pollution under control.

After the Games

On August 8, 2007, with exactly a year to go before the Olympic Games, I bought a special gift for the Games in Beijing. I made a payment to offset the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from my car over the coming year. The money will help to compensate for the greenhouse gases I emit, paying for their treatment and absorption so that they have no overall effect on the environment.

I drive my car an average of 200 kilometres every week, producing a total of around 2.39 tonnes of CO2 emissions a year; I paid 300 yuan (US$40) to offset these emissions. This was as a gift from me – an ordinary Chinese citizen – to the Beijing Olympic Games, which stand for science, technology, the environment and humanism.

I bought my carbon offsets from a website recommended by WWF, an environmental NGO. The money will be used by environmental organisations around the world to clear up pollution and to research new, clean energy sources – cancelling out the harmful effects of my greenhouse-gas emissions.

The WWF called in July for all athletes taking part in the Beijing Olympics to offset the CO2 emissions from their flights, which will come to an average of around four tonnes each. They hope that this will encourage other people to follow their lead in reducing the environmental cost of their travel. Every year, air travel is responsible for 3.5% of all global CO2 emissions.

I recently presented a news programme about the Olympics on China Central Television`s English-language channel CCTV-9, as well as “Sprint to 2008″, a CCTV-2 special. Filming these programmes, I met lots of old friends who have already contributed a great deal to the Beijing Games, including Gerhard Heiberg, chairman of the Marketing Commission for the International Olympic Committee. Meeting with them moved me to again ask myself the question: as a young Chinese person, what gift should I give to the Olympics?

After mulling the question over for a considerable time, I decided to buy the offsets, and I will continue to buy them in the future. My next step will be to offset emissions from my air travel and use of air conditioning. If you are interested to make a similar gift, you can visit the following websites. It is extremely simple to calculate your emissions and to make purchases:

http://www.climatefriendly.com

http://www.my-climate.org

Deng Yaping, a four-time Olympic table tennis gold medallist, recently presented one of a series of Chinese public information films to promote environmental awareness in advance of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The film explains the importance of using both sides of paper in the office and is part of a project jointly organised by the United Nations Development Programme, the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games (BOCOG) and China`s Ministry of Environmental Protection. Each of the eight environmental films is fronted by a different Olympic gold medallist.

Zou Jing, deputy editor of World Environment, spoke to Deng about her role as a member of the Olympic Sport and Environment Commission and a deputy at BOCOG`s Olympic Village Department.

As the 2008 Olympics approach, China finds itself in the throes of a Herculean campaign to make the Olympics not only a resounding organisational success, but also a “green” Games. However, a whole host of intractable environmental problems threaten these efforts. Daunting challenges are presented by contaminated foods, depleted reservoirs, polluted water and severe air-pollution.

Because of their desire to have a better material standard of living for their people, until recently China`s leaders have welcomed almost any kind of “development” and tolerated the added toxic load involved. But recently, president Hu Jintao has begun to emphasise what he calls “scientific development”, a code word for a more sustainable approach to growth. The central Chinese leadership, although still eschewing the developed world`s calls for “carbon caps,” has evinced a growing awareness at the ways in which unbridled development is depleting natural resources and poisoning the country. But, as one Chinese official recently told me: “We cannot act alone. You must help us remove America as our excuse for not dealing with climate change.”

Developed countries seem unaware of China`s bind. They all too often complain about the loss of jobs to Chinese factories while quietly overlooking a dirty secret: China has become a dumping ground for ever more of the industrial pollution that is the unavoidable consequence of our own rapacious material consumption. Its environmental downfall, even if willingly embraced until now, has been our environmental salvation.

But it would appear that China is now reaching a tipping point on environmental issues. And whereas several years ago there was relatively little said about climate change, now top leaders in Beijing have begun to cautiously speak out, although they do not always appear quite sure what to do about the problem.

Indeed, all around China, reasons for concern have begun to manifest themselves in aberrant weather patterns. This summer, while the North China Plain was suffering a drought, the worst torrential downpour in recorded history hit Shandong province`s capital city, Jinan. Then, in South China`s Guangdong province, the city of Zhanjiang received almost 30 inches (76.2 centimetres) of rainfall in 24 hours, the most severe storm in 200 years of record keeping. At the same time, rather alarming statistics keep coming out in regard to the glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau. They are now said to be melting at a rate of 7% annually.

Back when the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997, China signed on only as a “developing nation”, which meant that it was exempted from caps on carbon emissions. The United States “unsigned” under President Bush. By absenting themselves from this fragile international regime, the world`s two major contributors of greenhouse gases came close to crippling this incipient global effort.

As lamentable as America`s ongoing truancy has been, it now presents Chinese leaders with an opportunity. At this penultimate moment before the Olympic Games, as the world casts around for some possible course, China`s leaders have a chance not only to make the Olympics truly “green”, but to help lead the world out of the climate change impasse into which it is now falling. Indeed, there could be no more effective way for Beijing to begin calming critics and protesters who now threaten to gather at the Games than to begin moving into the vacuum left by the Bush administration to assert initiative in global struggle against climate change. For without the participation of China and the US, there will be no remedy to this urgent threat.

What is needed is a major, extra-governmental effort similar to “The Interdependencies on Energy and Climate Security for China and Europe Project” now working a similar plan for the EU and China. Recognising this, and with an eye towards a new US presidency in 2009, a consortium of concerned specialists from the Asia Society, The Brookings Institution, Environmental Defense and the Council on Foreign Relations have recently come together in New York City to begin drafting a “road map” for collaborative Sino-US action. By putting together a high-level task force of scientists, CEOs, civil society leaders, academics and political figures in both the US and China, the project specifically aims to catalyse cooperation to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions resulting from energy use, especially the continued reliance on coal to power our respective economies.

What is so tantalizingly promising about such a Sino-US effort is that should it attain critical mass, not only would it help keep alive the hope for a solution to the daunting challenge of global warming, but it could also inject a whole new foundation of common interest into the often rocky Sino-US relationship, which is, after all, the most importantly bilateral relationship in the world today.

If the Olympic Games could become a launching pad for such a bilateral effort and at the same time trigger a more environmentally friendly and durable set of central governmental policies within China itself, then history would, indeed, remember 2008 not only as the first “green Olympic Games,” but as one of the catalyzing moments in history when the world`s two major powers took notice of both their national interests, and the world`s common interest, to finally rally in a collaborative manner to solve one of the world`s most formidable challenges.

Orville Schell is director of the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society and a longtime writer on China.

Homepage photo by George Washington

EDITOR’S NOTE: These pictures were all taken by Sean Gallagher, a British photographer based in China, between June 26 and July 2, 2008. All of the photographs were taken in Beijing, and most of them depict vehicles that have been left or abandoned under the raised ring roads in the city centre. In this series, the photographer has not set out to show ordinary cars in the Chinese capital; he uses abandoned vehicles as static objects, which illustrate the quantity of dust and sand that accumulates in the city’s air. Some of this dust is from naturally occurring sandstorms, but – as the photographer points out in his comment – much of it also comes from the booming construction industry.

Backgrounder: air pollution in China

Sixteen of the world`s 20 most polluted cities are in China. More than 500 million people live in Chinese urban areas including the capital, Beijing, where air pollution is damaging to human health.

“Extensive use of coal, the city`s location and the growing number of cars means the improvement in Beijing`s air quality is slow,” the Associated Press quoted Eric Falt, an official at the United Nations Environment Program, as saying last October. “Particularly worrying are the levels of small particulate matter%26hellip; in the atmosphere which is severely harmful to public health.”

The World Health Organisation`s (WHO) Air Pollution Index (API) is a measurement of concentrations of chemicals and dust particles in the air. The WHO recommends an API measurement of 50 as its maximum safe daily level. May 2008 saw a daily API average of 131 in Beijing. May 27, 2008, saw the capital`s API peak at 463, over nine times the safe level.

As the Beijing Olympics approach, concerns are being raised about the quality of the air in the capital, particularly by athletes, some of whom have proposed wearing masks during the competition, training in other countries, or even pulling out of events.

Whatever happens at the Olympics, Beijing residents will continue to live with smoggy skies after the Games. According to the Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning, the country`s air pollution caused over 400,000 premature deaths in 2003.

Beijing is a city of 16.33 million and China overall boasts 1.3 billion people – 20% of the world`s population. As a rapidly developing nation with growing energy and resource needs, no nation has a more important role to play than China in making the urgent transition to sustainable development.

A new Greenpeace report, available here, aims to provide an independent assessment of the environmental initiatives of Beijing`s 2008 Olympic Games. In 2006 Beijing`s population was 16.33 million and China overall boasts 1.3 billion people – 20% of the world`s population. As a rapidly developing nation with growing energy and resource needs, fewer nations have a more important role to play than China in making the urgent transition to sustainable development. The Olympics “green” theme has been the force driving both short-term projects and long-term infrastructure initiatives in Beijing. Planning for this international mega event has presented unique environmental challenges and opportunities for Beijing as it has for all Olympic hosts. Beijing`s original bid and additional environmental commitments include the following:

%26bull; While air quality during the period of the Games in 2008 will be of a high quality, and meet Chinese and World Health Organization (WHO) standards, Beijing municipal government is nonetheless committed to achieve a high standard for the whole year.

%26bull; Cleaner energy will be supplied to the urban area for domestic usage and natural gas consumption will be increased by a factor of five by 2007.

%26bull; By 2007 exhaust from new vehicles will be reduced by 60%. A full list of commitments is provided in the report.

Greenpeace`s rating of Beijing should be taken in the context of a number of factors:

%26bull; As a developing country, China faces serious environmental challenges associated with its rapid growth, population and limited experience in environmental solutions. Yet, the environmental Olympic initiatives and investment made by Beijing in some cases far exceed those of many developed and developing countries with vast experience in managing environmental issues such as Sydney and Athens.

%26bull; A number of Beijing`s achievements represent the world`s best environmental practice %26mdash; a huge leap from the existing polluting or destructive technologies and systems currently in use throughout the developing world. In this, Beijing has been able to show that making the transition to more sustainable approaches is possible when a concerted effort is made.

%26bull; Despite Greenpeace`s earlier on-going engagement with the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) in the form of regular consultations, during the drafting of the report, Greenpeace did not have sufficient access to important information regarding Beijing`s environmental progress. This has made it difficult for Greenpeace to accurately gauge how successful Beijing`s environmental initiatives have been.

In our analysis from the information available, Greenpeace found that Beijing achieved and in some cases surpassed original environmental goals but also missed some opportunities that could have ensured a better short- and long-term environmental Olympic legacy for the city.

Beijing`s key achievements include:

%26bull; The introduction of state-of-the-art energy saving technology in Olympic venues %26mdash; for example the Olympic Village will showcase various technologies such as solar hot water, geothermal, and solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. These represent a welcome shift away from a reliance on polluting fossil fuels.

When the Olympic flag was unfurled at the “Bird`s Nest” stadium in Beijing, the Chinese leaders at the scene must have been wondering what the Games would mean to China after the closing ceremonies. The 51 gold medals won by China have probably been enough to ease the pain and frustration of their star athlete Liu Xiang`s sudden departure from the 110-metre hurdles.

This year, the Chinese people have experienced the tragic Sichuan earthquake and the glory of Olympic fanfare, uniting us in sorrow and pain as well as inspiring us with the spirit of international cooperation. With such a dramatic backdrop, it is inevitable that the Chinese people feel a sense of loss after the Olympics. China and its people will need to look for a new cause to unite the country%26mdash;a cause championed by its leaders and pursued by its people.

In fact, China has already embarked on the path of this cause. These Olympics were advertised as the “green Olympics.” From banning plastic bags to shutting down factories and reducing the number of cars on the road, Beijing has started to create an environmental and people-friendly city. And in the past 10 years, Beijing citizens, for the first time, can experience the convenience of public transportation and unclogged roads as well as improved air quality.

From the presence of numerous state leaders at the opening ceremony to the thousands of Olympic volunteers, Chinese authorities should realise that the international community and the Chinese people have all been wishing China well. The communist rulers should have confidence in their own people that we can help find environmental solutions for China`s unparalleled environmental challenges. Just as athletes need support and freedom to train for gold medals, so do citizens and civil society organizations need support and freedom to help China find effective environmental solutions that will benefit the entire country.

Prior to the Olympics, most of these nongovernmental groups have been screened due to fear that they could create trouble during the Games. But this fear has proven to be unwarranted. Instead, the government should regard these groups as natural allies and should work together with them to protect the environment, reduce poverty, improve education, fight diseases, and protect public health.

The Chinese public must be at the forefront of an effective response to China`s environmental challenges. Currently, China`s environmental movement is organising conservation efforts, leading education programs, and engaging community members in volunteer work. Chinese environmental organisations also have a unique opportunity to work with the government to implement environmental regulations and emulate Beijing`s environmental achievements nationwide.

All of China`s impressive progress and accomplishments to address pollution issues prior to the Olympics have been paralleled with continued environmental challenges across the country: pollution continues to impact the environment and human health in major cities and rural provinces. While the Beijing 2008 Olympics have elevated the status of environmental protection in China, I hope that the improvements we have seen in Beijing will be replicated across the country and continue long after the Olympic Games` closing ceremonies.

As one of the countries that hold the key to saving the world from environmental destruction, China can help lead efforts to protect the environment. Now, after the closing ceremonies have ended and the international attention has gone away, the real Olympic challenge begins. China made enormous progress dealing with its environmental issues during the Olympics. Can China maintain and advance these environmental gains after the Olympics, benefiting people throughout China? Can China adapt its successes in Beijing to address the environmental challenges throughout China`s vast provinces?

China has a new challenge after the Olympics%26mdash;one that is arguably even more important than this celebration of humanity and international cooperation that occurs once every four years. Now that the Olympic flame has been extinguished at the Bird`s Nest stadium, China`s leaders and people need to work together to protect the environment. Even more than the Olympics, this new cause that can unite China, its leaders, and its people will define China`s legacy in the future.

Wen Bo is the Beijing-based China programme co-director of Pacific Environment, a San Francisco environmental group working to protect the environment around the Pacific Rim. He is also an Asia Society fellow

Homepage photo by kafka4prez

The Olympics have finally drawn to a close, but debate over the “Olympic legacy” continues.

In an article for chinadialogue last year, I suggested that air quality during the Olympics would not be an issue because the Chinese government had both the desire and the means to implement any necessary measures at any price.

In accordance with my predictions, during the Olympics air pollution reached a 10-year low. The International Olympic Committee lavished great praise on Beijing’s green efforts. But all we want to know is if it will last.

People are also asking whether or not the Beijing Olympics were “carbon neutral”.

In terms of this point, it is useful to note that it is hard even to find an accepted definition of carbon neutrality. Nevertheless, for the Beijing Olympics we could say that it means taking a range of measures to cancel out the extra greenhouse-gas emissions created during the event.

The 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin and the 2006 World Cup in Germany already provided models of climate protection for large sporting events.

According to an environmental assessment issued by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in November 2006, the Turin Winter Olympics caused the equivalent of 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) to be released, of which 70% were offset through investment in power-saving and renewable energy projects in Italy and tree-planting in Kenya.

The organisers of the World Cup said the event emitted 92,000 tonnes of CO2, with 100,000 tonnes offset through clean energy projects in India and South Africa. This made it the first ever carbon-neutral World Cup.

As a developing nation, China does not have the same obligation to reduce emissions as developed nations such as Italy or Germany. But the international community still hopes to see some action taken on climate protection from the Beijing Olympics.

In October 2007 a UNEP report called for the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games (BOCOG) “to openly declare a commitment on climate change and offsetting.”

According to a report in Caijing magazine, BOCOG did not respond directly to this request. However, government authorities did subsequently calculate the carbon balance sheet for the games.

The initial results of these carbon calculations were revealed by China’s science and technology minister at a press conference of the State Council in May 2008. During the Games, he said, the equivalent of an extra 1.18 million tonnes of CO2 would be released. However, a range of “green Olympics” measures, including technological fixes, tree-planting and restrictions on vehicles, would reduce emissions by between 1 million and 1.29 million tonnes in order to make the Games more-or-less carbon neutral.

Those calculations also showed that the single most effective emissions-reduction measure was the two-month long restriction on private vehicles on Beijing`s roads. This measure alone would cut carbon emissions by 850,000 tonnes. Technological solutions, such as the installation of solar panels at Olympic venues, were of relatively limited impact.

It is still hard to say if the Games will actually be carbon-neutral. After all, large quantities of data cannot be confirmed until after the Paralympics have concluded. It will be several months before we have final environmental impact reports from the Chinese government and UNEP.

There is also considerable disagreement over just how to calculate emissions, as well as which measures can be classified as offsetting carbon production.

Interestingly, just after the Olympic Games, the British Embassy in Beijing issued a press release saying that the 2012 London Olympics would aim to be the first “sustainable” Olympics, setting new standards for reducing the impact on the the climate.

This statement could be understood as saying that London does not consider the Beijing Olympics to have been “sustainable” and is not yet convinced that emissions have been offset.

But carbon neutral or not, the 2008 Games will leave a valuable legacy, the benefits of which are not just limited to Beijing.

As Greenpeace said in its report on the Games, After the Olympics: lessons from Beijing: “Many of Beijing`s environmental initiatives have set a good example for other Chinese cities to follow.”

For instance, in a report in Energy Policy, Wu Lisong and colleagues at the Circular Economy Institute at Beijing Aeronautics and Astronautics University described the Olympics as having accelerated Beijing`s efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Indeed, between 2001 and 2006 the capital reduced emissions by a total of 80 million tonnes of CO2.

The Olympics also have been accompanied by an increased awareness of climate change among both Chinese government officials and the public.

Beijing`s neighbouring province of Hebei has shut down a number of energy-hungry and polluting factories and is pushing forward with the development of clean energy sources such as wind power. Ji Zhenhai, head of the provincial environmental protection agency, wrote in the Hebei Daily that these measures will both improve the air in Beijing and promote the reduction of carbon emissions, laying the foundation for a shift to a low-carbon economy.

Some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) saw the Beijing Games as the ideal opportunity to promote issues of climate protection. The Environmental Defense Fund`s China office, the China Association for NGO Cooperation and BOCOG worked together on a “green travel” project encouraging the use of public transport and car-sharing. Using an online calculator, participants are able to calculate the CO2 they would save.

In my opinion, all these changes are more important than the supposed carbon neutrality of the Games themselves.

Li Taige is a Beijing-based journalist. He obtained a master`s degree in engineering from Sichuan University in 1997 and was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2003-04.

Homepage photo by guidofoc

Visiting Beijing for the very successful Olympic Games in August, and then attending the Urban Transportation Management Forum organized by the Shenzhen Municipal Government to talk to their planning bureau about the experience of congestion charging in London, gave me an interesting idea. During my visit to the east coast cities in China, I was struck by the possibility of introducing London-style congestion charging to Beijing. Such measures increasingly need to be considered due to the need to reduce congestion and improve air quality in Beijing, particularly after the successful short-term measures undertaken during the Olympics have come to an end.

The clear blue skies at the end of the Beijing Olympics were impressive, especially given concerns expressed by some about the possible adverse effects of air pollution on the performance of top athletes. The latter, of course, did not materialise, as 43 world records and 120 Olympic records were shattered during the Games. Credit here should go to the initiatives taken by the city authorities to improve air quality in Beijing during the Olympics, which were achieved by providing better and cheaper public transport and implementing the car licensing scheme. The success of the latter has interestingly led to local people to call for the extension of the two-month, odd-even license plate restriction that allows the city`s 3.3 million private car owners to drive only on alternate days. In the case of public transport, Zhou Zhengyu, deputy director of the Beijing municipal committee during the Olympics, announced that the reduced ticket prices in use for the duration of the Games would be extended. In Beijing there was a cut in the standard price of a bus ticket by 60% for regular passengers and 80% for students. Last October, the price of a single journey subway ticket was slashed 30% to 2 yuan (US$ 0.29). So, not surprisingly, because of the cheaper fares and the traffic control measures introduced for the Olympics, the proportion of Beijing residents now using public transport on a daily basis is up to 45% from 35%.

The national government initiatives enacted at the beginning of September to raise taxes on big cars and reduce them on smaller ones will also contribute to improving the quality of life in Beijing. Owners of cars with engines above four-litres capacity will have to pay a 40% tax, which is double the existing rate. The tax for cars between three and four litres will rise from 15% to 25%. However, those cars with below one-litre capacity will be reduced from 3% to 1%. This tax move is a good first step for the country towards an energy-efficient and environmentally friendly economy, while helping to save fuel and thus increase energy security.

Yet Beijing will still have 3.3 million cars, and that figure is growing by 300,000 a year. The only solution to this challenge is the continuous development of the city`s public transport system along its current path, but with one addition – congestion charging that will ration road space by price, so that the marginal cost of an additional trip by a car owner will be paramount in their minds.

The geography of Beijing, with its various ring roads, would lend itself very easily to congestion charging. At the beginning, a congestion charge zone could be introduced within either the second or third ring road and then be extended outwards depending on the success of the scheme and public demand for it. In order to win public support, the funds raised from the congestion charge would have to be reinvested into public transport. As in London, some exemptions, or at least a discount rate, might have to be granted to residents within the charge zone. Nevertheless, the scheme could be put into operation very quickly using simple technology like closed-circuit television at the entry points off the ring roads and camera enforcement using a database of car licenses. Although I understand there is not as yet a national database of car licenses in China, and I am unsure as to numbers of cars that move between the various cities of China, these hurdles should not be insurmountable for the Chinese authorities to overcome.

One day I look forward to visiting Beijing again and seeing road congestion charging, or least another variant of road pricing, being implemented to improve the quality of life for Beijing’s residents. This should be the icing on the cake, heaped on top of the outstanding investment already undertaken by the authorities, measures that are aimed toward people-centred and scientific methods of development.

Murad Qureshi is deputy Chair of the London Assembly`s Environmental Committee. This article was originally published at The Qureshi Report.