No mention of the Subway expansion during that time?
I had trouble finding numbers, so please correct me if I’m wrong, but the subway went from around 200km to 900km and from a handful of lines to 30 lines since 2008.
this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2026
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yeah they have done alot things to improve not just ev's
Ya, the article mentions shutting down factories and coal plants, etc., but it didn’t say anything about the massive subway expansion, which must be getting a lot of cars off of the road.
Yeah but EVs means we can use the same profit making capitalist system. Trains and subways don't turn as much profit. And it's a socialist mode of transportation. /s
While America we are still tryna make a HSR from BakersField to Merced for the past 30 years
Who will ride this? god knows, we will somehow have full self driving cars by then
Clearer than ever, but still (currently) >4x WHO recommended pollution levels
https://www.iqair.com/us/china/beijing/beijing
China in general has improved drastically but it still has pretty big issues in the winter due in large part to the increased heating demand.
It's always nice to see some good news in the shitshow that is modern day life, makes me hopeful that a better future is still possible. I hope that one day Beijing (and the rest of the world) can go back to clean air 365 days a year.
China is basically what the western world was in the 60-70's where progress were all over the place.
Still behind in terms of alot of things, especially workers rights, but it's not going backwards like it is in the US.
Like all countries, there's some good and bad things to say, but I think that investing in renewables was a very smart move on their part.
They still did it for all other reasons than being eco friendly.
They simply just have the minerals and mines for solar and batteries. And the big one is offering the world an alternative for oil, which takes a big chunk into US profits.
We are just lucky that it also means cleaner air for everyone.
China is already the world’s factory, so why not become the world’s battery factory too.
People seem to be interested in electric vehicles, so might as well. Once China is the number one EV manufacturer, battery manufacturer and solar panel manufacturer, it’s going to become as wealthy as Saudi Arabia and USA combined.
Good luck keeping up with that pace if your country still run on coal.
Those other reasons were important, but China has a history of investing in industrial resources way before they're expected to be profitable, and often at greater scale than the market would dictate. 1980s China didn't expect Rare Earth minerals to turn a profit, but they understood that cheap Gallium for example meant LCD manufacturers would be more competitive/productive.
When China started investing in solar panels 15 years ago, the price per PV was 5x more than it is now.
Living conditions have improved for the majority but the current leader (13 years) has increased autocracy, further reduced freedoms, continued oppressing Uyghurs and Hong Kong and increased the threat on Taiwan.
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"Thanks to EV" → annoying oversimplification. As even this biased article states "The change has been a result of government policy focusing on smog reductions, including restrictions on heavy industry". One should also add expansion of public transit services to the mix of factors.
Unfortunately, depending on the jetstream, we still get a lot of their pollution blowing over here to Korea. I think it is mostly from coal power plants on the coast. Anecdotally, the effect of EVs on the air there does feel like it has lessened the amount of smog that blows over to Korea, in the spring especially. Glad to hear they are making progress. Last time I was in Beijing the air was unbearably smoky (2011).
Yeah, seems like these days it's mostly good, then every once in a while you get some massive smog bank blowing in. Definitely an (anecdotal) improvement over even just a few years ago when it was almost constantly smoggy in Korea. Korea is also not entirely innocent of coal dependency itself.
Unfortunately despite leading on EVs, renewables and nuclear power deployment, China is also expanding coal. So their greenhouse gas emissions are still rising.
I was under the impression that they reached peak CO2 emissions and have been flat or falling for the past year or so
Honestly I thought so too, but I quickly looked it up before commenting, and at least according to Our World in Data it's actually up both per capita and in absolute terms.
Interesting I'm not familiar with how these measurements are taken.
This was the source I was thinking of:
It’s great news regardless but I don’t know why they feel the need to over-attribute this to EVs. It’s not like the majority of the population in Beijing ever drove cars. Regulations on heavy industry are briefly glossed over 10 paragraphs down so they can go back to glowing about EVs. But my impression after visiting Beijing was that a lot of the smog came from people relying on coal cakes for everyday cooking and heating.
Major city moves its pollution to a different, poorer area
should be the title.
They also moved shitload of industry outside of Beijing around 2008, so the pollution moves to more rural cities.
EV and transport in Beijing is great, impressive, and I enjoy them greatly when I was there, but it is also important to set realistic expectations. Switching to EV and transport improves people's lives a lot and probably can be a golden bullets in many western cities. But for a city as dense and big as Beijing, there needs to be other sacrifices.
I’ll give China props for not being beholden to oil companies
They don't have enough oil, that's the only reason they want green energy.
It pains me to say it, this century is indeed China's century. Unless World War 3 happens if Thucydides' trap is indeed the law of nature/ jungle.
Interesting. I'm not sure "clearer than ever" is a good descriptor for one of the regions with the worst air quality in the world. It gets much worse in the summer. It's certainly better at the moment than some other cities in China.
I can remember when China mostly got around on bicycles.
great thing that PM2.5's been vanquished. don't the visibility issues mostly come from inner-mongolian winds of the north, though?
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