How Did Beijing Achieve “APEC Blue”?
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Clearing Beijing’s sky in early November for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit was no simple feat. The effort to impress visiting foreign dignitaries gave locals a literal breath of fresh air, as well as the new, sarcastic phrase, “APEC blue,” which means something beautiful and ephemeral.
China Environmental News, the newspaper of China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection, recently published a behind-the-scenes look at how the capital pulled off its temporary smog-disappearance act. The solution was to enlist 434,000 cadres from Beijing and six nearby provinces. (A significant portion of the capital’s air pollution drifts from the emissions of factories and vehicles outside city limits.)