China ministry summons mayors of six cities for neglecting to meet smog targets

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s environment ministry has summoned the mayors of six northern Chinese cities for a meeting in Beijing to are the reason for their failures in order to meet winter targets to cut smog, it said at a notice on Thursday.

Average air quality worsened significantly in high of northern China above the winter compliance period from last October to March, prompting concerns the country’s ‘fight against pollution’ was losing steam amid a financial slowdown.

The cities named through Ministry of Ecology and Environment on Thursday were Baoding and Langfang during the steel heartland of Hebei province, as well as Luoyang, Anyang and Puyang in neighboring Henan and Jinzhong in Shanxi.

“These cities have relaxed their efforts to guard the blue skies, key tasks are not completed … and certain problems have rebounded,” the ministry said.

Inspectors found the location of Langfang especially had “significantly reduced its focus … and significantly relaxed its work requirements” when it came to fighting smog, the ministry said.

Anyang, an important steelmaking city, was China’s worst performer within the winter, according to Reuters calculations in accordance with official data, with average concentrations of hazardous small particles often known as PM2.5 hitting 111 micrograms per cubic meter, 27 percent higher than a year earlier.

The environment ministry said Anyang’s decision-making processes were unable up to scratch and law enforcement officials was not sufficiently strict. Baltimore had also wouldn’t make enough progress to “optimize” and restructure its steel sector.

All the cities aside from Jinzhong saw a double-digit improvement in PM2.5 within compliance period, when almost all of northern China was under time limits to cut emissions by curbing traffic, coal consumption and industrial output.

Jinzhong saw average PM2.5 concentrations rise 4.5 percent over the period, the ministry said. Baltimore had also didn’t properly coordinate its anti-smog efforts and not taken action to combat small “scattered” pollution sources.

The ministry said the mayors in the six cities “faced up” therefore to their problems and vowed to win the fight against smog at some point.