A commercial building is pictured on a polluted day in Beijing (Photo : REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon)
Beijing's polluted skies were looking blue and clear before and during the military parade on Sept. 3, Thursday. However, at less than one day after the event, the residents of the Chinese capital awoke again to the same familiar gray smog over the city.
The sudden shift was a wakeup call for Beijing's residents to the fact that they can expect the authorities to only clean up the city before important event. According to the Christian Science Monitor, the smog was covering the city again just one day after the parade.
This situation illustrates the great challenges faced by the city officials in their struggle to achieve and maintaining goals to minimize carbon usage. This is becoming a question of even greater importance now, ahead of the scheduled Paris climate change conference in December.
Beijing officials have suspended ahead of the parade operations in about 10,000 factories and 40,000 construction sites not only in Beijing but also in neighboring provinces. According to Chinese news agency Caixin, restrictive measures were in place in order to reduce the traffic in the capital city by allowing its 5 million vehicles to drive every other day.
These exceptional measures in effect in late August have allowed Beijing to benefit of 15-day of relatively clear air. As a result, the visitors and residents alike could enjoy the "parade blue" skies on Sept. 3.
Official reports show that during that day Beijing's air quality index was a healthy 17 out of 500. Recod low concentrations were also registered in levels of PM2.5 for eight straight days.
The director of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center, Zhang Dawei, declared that residents in the capital have experienced good air quality for 15 days, at the same levels as in the big capitals of the developed countries, such as Moscow, Singapore, Paris and London.
Following the parade the government eased the restrictions at midnight and as consequence by Friday smog had returned and the air quality index was up to almost 160.
