Discussion
China's air quality continued to improve in the first half of 2026, according to a new review of the country's air quality.
The report said the average concentration of PM2.5 particles maintained its downward trend as electric vehicles (EVs) made a growing contribution to reducing transport-related emissions.
@yogthos I'm one to criticize as someone from north america, but EVs are not he silver bullet to air quality. They're heavier, which means, though they don't produce tail pipe emissions, they produce tire and brake particulate much more intensely. These are actually the more acute effects for people who live within a block or so of major roads, even with windows closed all the time.
@sleepysaf first of all, the tire and break pollution is clearly not as bad as emissions from a gas engine running. Also, they are heavier for the same sized vehicle, and vehicles in Asia are much smaller as a rule.
Furthermore, China has excellent public transit and walkable cities, so overall reliance on cars is much lower as well.
@yogthos There's degrees of proximity of the harm. Tire and brake dust are the most location based. Move just a few streets over and the impact to health is minimized. Poorly efficient ICE cars will produce smog that covers a city, and the most efficient ICE cars will still produce emissions that warm the planet.
With that said, China does far, FAR better than our country at public transit, and even better still than the US does public transit. It's a country that grew and industrialized so rapidly. How do you accommodate that without grasping at every transportation option at your disposal, even less ideal ones like cars? Rhetorical question, China did what they could/had to do.
@sleepysaf a lot of it comes down to central planning actually. Major Chinese cities are moderately walkable and there's been upward trend between 2000 and 2010.
If you plan necessities like grocery stores, schools, hospitals, parks, and so on based on the population density then people don't even need to use transit a lot of the time.
This is a good paper talking about walkability in Chinese cities incidentally.
https://www.adb.org/publications/evolving-walkability-major-cities-prc
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