Mounting Public Pressure on Air Pollution; Growing Environmental Awareness via Social Media 

Beside having reinforced legislation system to ensure that the local governments enforce stringent measures to curb emissions from polluting industries, there is also a growing influence of public pressure in China's war against air pollution.

With the worsening of air pollution conditions in China such as the 2013 Beijing's 'airpocalyse', social media platforms such as microblogs have been instrumental in the increased public environmental awareness on air pollution. For instance, PM2.5 was a hot subject of interest on many Chinese microblogs when netizens started to question the authorities on the lack of PM2.5 readings.

In addition, the presence of real-time hourly PM2.5 readings from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing was widely made known to the public through microblogs. As a result, there was a mounting public pressure on the authorities to report PM2.5 levels, eventually leading to the 2012 revamp in the nationwide air quality standards which include PM2.5.

Thus, social media platforms can be seen as important channels in encouraging public participation against air pollution. There is also growing evidence that the China central government is encouraging public participation to toughen its stance against air pollution. It was announced last month that the Chinese government will be assisting public environmental groups to take the unlawful polluting companies to court. Under the new initiative, environmental groups will be granted special status and even lower court fees to sue these companies.

Public participation and public pressure are definitely having a ever-growing influence on the decisions made by the policymakers in tackling environmental issues. Although China's fight against air pollution remains a tricky one, it is evident that its central government has taken major strides over the past few years to resolve it. They can draw hope from the 2008 Beijing Olympics where blue skies formed beautiful scene over the city.

Clear Blue Skies Over the Beijing National Stadium
Source: AFP/ Stringer