Opinion | Blanket coverage for a lung-burning issue
Media doesn’t hold back in its reporting of the heavy smog that engulfed many of the big cities
China’s new rich are fond of saying “nothing is a problem if money can solve it”. But over the past week, nearly everyone in China realised there are things in the country that not even the rich can buy. Clean air was one of them. The recent air pollution reached such a horrifying level that brown clouds were actually observed over the country from space.
On Tuesday, Xinhua announced that smog had affected an area of 1.3 million square kilometres – more than a seventh of the country’s total area of 9.6 square kilometres.
It said the air in Beijing and Tianjin, and the provinces of Hebei and Shandong was “gravely polluted”, and that in the provinces of Henan, Shanxi, Jiangsu, Liaoning, Jilin, Anhui, Hubei, and Sichuan was “seriously polluted”.
This meant that of the 31provinces, municipalities and regions, 12 were hit by air pollution, an astonishingly high number even for a people used to being smothered by smog.
Zhong Nanshan, who is well known for his role in fighting the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, said on state television on Wednesday: “Air pollution is a combination of the external and internal environment, and it is much scarier than Sars. You can isolate Sars patients, but nobody can escape air pollution.”
The Guangzhou Daily newspaper’s front page on Wednesday carried photos of people from different regions of the country wearing various types of face mask.
The Southern Metropolis Daily’sfront page simply showed a smoggy Beijing street.