Pollution failures spark dissent as smog ‘red alerts’ hit 460mn in northern China

China has shut schools, restricted road traffic and urged people to stay indoors as 24 cities across the north-east were put on “red alert” for extreme smog yesterday.

The country’s most severe bout of air pollution this year has affected 460m people, who are exposed to smog levels six times higher than the World Health Organisation’s daily guidelines, according to calculations by Greenpeace. The smog has lasted more than three days in many areas.

By late morning, 217 flights at Beijing Capital Airport had been cancelled – almost a third of the schedule for the day.

Pollution has become a rallying force for Chinese citizens.

“The smog problem is a man-made disaster, local environment bureaux are not fulfilling their responsibilities,” wrote one online commenter.

“The government is under too little pressure. It’s not enough to make them reform and make people’s lives their top priority,” wrote another commenter. “The people are under too much pressure – if we try to protest, we’re said to be ‘creating public disorder’.”

A planned protest against smog in the southwestern city of Chengdu this month was pre-empted by riot police, who shut down the city’s central square.

“The link between smog and industry is clear. Since the second quarter of this year, when steel prices and output started growing, we saw air quality decline in the north-east,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, an air pollution specialist at Greenpeace in Beijing. “It’s a result of the government’s old-fashioned stimulus that boosted the industrial sectors.”

Two weeks ago, Beijing’s city legislature considered classifying smog as a “weather disaster”. The move was questioned by environmentalists who said it would help polluters escape responsibility for a man-made situation.

In response to the emergency, the Ministry of Environmental Protection sent out 16 inspection teams and singled out chemicals companies that had failed to shut down their operations under the red-alert regulations, as well as power plants and coal-burning plants that had not met environmental standards.

Beijing, which has been on red alert since Friday, halved the number of vehicles allowed on the road on any given day by banning even- and odd-numbered licence plates on different days.