Blinding Smog Cripples Beijing

December 09, 2011 from LinkAsia

The smog is just beginning to clear after a month that threatened to bring China's capital city to a standstill. Several days ago, visibility dropped to 100 yards, grounding flights and shutting down highways. Footage from Reuters.

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Beijing

Beijing, sometimes romanized as Peking, is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world. The population as of 2012 was 20,693,000. The metropolis, located in northern China, is governed as a direct-controlled municipality under... Explore this topic

Smog

Smog is a type of air pollution; the word "smog" was made in the early 20th century as a portmanteau of the words smoke and fog to refer to smoky fog. The word was then intended to refer to what was sometimes known as pea soup fog, a familiar and serious problem in London from... Explore this topic

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China, officially the People's Republic of China, is a sovereign state located in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population of over 1.35 billion. The PRC is a single-party state governed by the Communist Party, with its seat of government in the cap... Explore this topic

Airport

An airport is a location where aircraft such as fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and blimps take off and land. Aircraft may be stored or maintained at an airport. An airport consists of at least one surface such as a runway for a plane to take off and land, a helipad, or wate... Explore this topic

Environment

Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements. Environ... Explore this topic

Air Quality Index

An air quality index is a number used by government agencies to communicate to the public how polluted the air is currently or how polluted it is forecast to become. As the AQI increases, an increasingly large percentage of the population is likely to experience increasingly s... Explore this topic

Beijing Capital International Airport

Beijing Capital International Airport is the main international airport serving Beijing. It is located 32 km northeast of Beijing's city center, in an enclave of Chaoyang District and the surroundings of that enclave in suburban Shunyi District. The airport is owned and operat... Explore this topic

Capital city

A capital city or capital town is the municipality enjoying primary status in a state, country, province, or other region as its seat of government. A capital is typically a city that physically encompasses the offices and meeting places of its respective government and is nor... Explore this topic

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Reuters

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Yul Kwon:
According to the American embassy in Beijing, the air pollution level is "moderate." That’s actually good news: because for much of the past month, a thick smog has covered Beijing and a huge swathe of China, from the capital all the way down to Fujian province - 13 hundred miles to the south.

This is downtown Beijing at 8 o’clock in the morning a few days ago. The smog was so thick that visibility was down to about a hundred yards causing hundreds of flights to be cancelled. Those that did take off were often diverted because other airports, including Shanghai’s, were closed. Police even shut down highways because the smog made it too dangerous to drive.

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