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Comment by diebeforei485 | Hacker News Reader

Depends where and when. China has largely fixed its air quality problems as of 2024.

I’m in China right now and I can unequivocally tell you that this is not true. I can hardly see the sun and it’s not due to overcast weather.

It depends where in China. Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Wuhan, Xi'an, Hangzhou, Qingdao, Dalian, are all doing well. There is more to the country than Beijing and Shanghai (even Shanghai is much improved).

They did so for the Olympics by stopping a lot of polluters from operating.

As soon as the games left town, the pollution came back.

beijing's air quality did not get worse after the olympics. (edited to clarify)

I decided just to google Beijing air quality and both results came back... Not so good.

"Dangerous Any exposure to the air, even for a few minutes, can lead to serious health effects on everybody. Avoid outdoor activities." https://www.accuweather.com/en/cn/beijing/101924/air-quality...

"Very Unhealthy Health warnings of emergency conditions. The entire population is more likely to be affected." https://aqicn.org/city/beijing/

So not sure I fully believe that.

true, but it wasn't any better during the olympics and i think it was much worse before that. i only got there shortly before the olympics so all i can confirm is that it did not get any worse after.

according to this report air quality in beijing continuously improved for the last few decades:

https://www.unep.org/resources/report/review-20-years-air-po...

There is more to China than just Beijing.

yes, but the olympics were mainly in beijing, so when it comes to the question of what happened with the air quality after the olympics, beijing matters the most.

Source for this being categorically false [1].

[1] https://www.iqair.com/us/china/beijing

See the list of cities in China on the left for more...

It’s worth mentioning that each country develops its own AQI scale, so comparisons between countries are meaningless.

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