Average monthly air quality index of Shanghai, China 2016-2017

As of June 2017, the average monthly air quality index in Shanghai stood at 30.73, within the “Good” category, as one of the months with better air quality compared to earlier of the year.

Air Pollution in Shanghai

Shanghai was doing relatively better than Beijing in terms of air quality, despite with a higher population than Beijing. The Ministry of ecology and environment has stated in 2015 that the main source of air pollution in Shanghai was dust, mobile sources and industrial production, as opposed to motorized vehicles in Beijing, Shenzhen and Guangzhou.

What can be done about poor air quality in China?

In recent years, air pollution had gradually become the top environmental concern to Chinese citizens. With the emergence of the public’s health concerns, the Chinese government also introduced plans to ease the air pollution, including setting a target for fine particulate matter, the completion of construction and renovation of pollution control facilities, introducing vehicle control, and renewing the fleet of public buses. Since 2001, China has invested over one percent of GDP annually on pollution control, which was worth over 953 billion yuan in 2017.