Beijing in first smog alert of year

Beijing is blanketed with thick smog on Tuesday, a sharp contrast to the blue skies during the APEC meetings in the capital in November.

Hazy days set to last until Friday

Beijing issued its first smog alert of 2015 on Tuesday, with the PM2.5 index passing the 200 level.

The alert will probably remain in force until Friday, the municipal environmental authority said.

Based on the official daily air quality forecast, the capital issued a yellow alert and adopted emergency measures to rein in emissions on Sunday, one day before the smog descended. A yellow alert is the third-highest level among four grades.

Shanghai, which emerged from three days of smog on Monday, will experience another round of air pollution on Wednesday, according to the regional air quality forecast center.

The air quality forecast, which is as important as the daily weather forecast, has begun to attract more attention, especially from people living in large cities like Beijing and Shanghai, which witness frequent air pollution.

By the end of 2014, cities in three major industrial zones - the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area, the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta - were required to provide a daily air quality forecast, according to the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

This will be expanded this year to more cities that have the requisite equipment and technology.

Beijing, one of the first cities to issue such forecasts, can predict changing air quality over five days. This enables it to provide accurate statistics for the authorities to take emergency measures to reduce air pollutants a day before smog arrives.

Xie Shaodong, an environmental professor at Peking University, said: "The technology is not a problem. With better cooperation and smoother exchanges of information between meteorological and environmental bureaus, the forecast can be more accurate."

Yu Yong, a spokesman for the National Meteorological Administration, said it plans to deepen cooperation on air pollution forecasting through regular discussions and exchanges of technology.

According to a development plan released on Dec 17 to help control air pollution, the meteorological administration will build more laboratories in six regions to strengthen weather forecasting by 2020.

Under the plan, by that year China will have built a well-functioning weather modification system and have made progress in experiments on reducing fog and smog through human effort.

Source: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/

Shanghai to cancel massive gatherings 'if necessary'

SHANGHAI - Shanghai decided on Tuesday to tighten controls on large gatherings after the stampede that killed 36 people during the New Year's Eve celebrations.

Mass activities in Shanghai will face stricter registration procedures, and will be canceled if they violate safety rules, said Zhou Bo, vice mayor of Shanghai, at a national conference on workplace safety.

The stampede occurred on Shanghai's historic riverfront walk, the Bund, where tens of thousands of people gathered to ring in the New Year.

The tragedy in one of China's wealthiest and most modern cities, has cast a shadow over urban management and emergency response in the crowded cities.

Zhou said the Shanghai making changes to emergency procedures and rearranging scheduled gatherings.

On Tuesday, Shanghai Mayor Yang Xiong said the city should draw a "bloody lesson" from the stampede and reflect deeply.

Source: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/

Tears as Shanghai laments stampede victims

Flowers are placed on Tuesday at the site where 36 people were killed in a stampede during a New Year's Eve celebration on the Bund in Shanghai.

SHANGHAI - The city of Shanghai was steeped in sorrow on Tuesday as citizens and victims' families visited the site of the New Year's Eve stampede to mark the seventh-day commemoration of the tragedy.

Braving freezing temperatures and drizzle, visitors laid flowers and winter clothes on the Chen Yi Square near the Bund area, where the stampede killed 36 people and injured 49 others.

There were tearful moments for relatives of the victims, some of whom, overwhelmed by sorrow, fainted at the site and were attended to by medical staff on stand-by.

Many held portraits showing the young faces of the deceased.

"We felt so sad that these young lives vanished in such a happy moment," said a tourist from Anhui Province, who placed flowers at the site.

The crush happened at about 11:35 p.m. on Dec. 31 on the Bund, a riverbank walk where tens of thousands of revelers gathered to ring in the New Year against the backdrop of illuminated skyscrapers along the Huangpu River.

Tuesday marked the seventh-day commemoration of the tragedy. In China, the seventh day after any death marks the height of mourning as people believe that souls come back to the earthly world to pay their last visit to family on that day.

The site was cordoned off on Tuesday, and visitors were ushered in by government workers. Some police officers patrolling the site said they had joined in the rescue mission that night and were here to lament the death.

The tragedy in one of China's wealthiest and most modern cities has raised concerns over urban management and emergency response in China's crowded cities.

Shanghai Mayor Yang Xiong said Tuesday at a conference of the city's legislature that Shanghai must draw a lesson from the New Year's Eve stampede and reflect deeply on the incident.

"The lesson was extremely profound and extremely painful," he said, adding that the cause of the accident is yet to be confirmed.

"We hope such disasters will never happen again," said a Shanghai citizen at the site.

Source: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/

Asthma on the rise over past decade

A specially designed truck sprays mist to reduce dust in the air in Zhengzhou, Henan province, on Tuesday. The vehicle is said to be able to alleviate smog effectively.

Asthma cases have risen dramatically in China over the past decade along with ever deteriorating air pollution, according to leading respiratory specialists.

Nationwide, the prevalence of asthma stands at 1 to 2 percent, while in some cities it can reach more than 10 percent, a leading pulmonary physician said.

Lin Jiangtao, director of the China Asthma Alliance and a physician at China-Japan Friendship Hospital, was citing results from the first nationwide epidemiology survey on asthma, which he led.

The potentially fatal disease has risen quickly across the nation, with Shanghai recording the fastest increase in prevalence of 190 percent over the past decade.

"Given that air pollution is a major risk factor in asthma, the disease is still rising constantly," Lin warned.

In a widely reported case, Chinese mother Shang Yujun moved her son to three different Chinese cites to escape air pollution before finally settling in London to control his asthma.

Lin suggested that patients with the disease limit outdoor activities and heavy exercise on days with high concentrations of pollutants, as such conditions can prompt asthma attacks.

Asthma is the leading cause of hospitalization among children in China and imposes a significant burden on their families. Patients with the condition have increased rates of work absenteeism.

The Asia Asthma Development Board said China has the world’s highest mortality rate from asthma, with 36.7 out of 100,000 patients failing to survive.

Wang Chen, a leading respiratory disease expert and an academic at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said, "Various respiratory diseases have become a public health challenge in China."

But he said public awareness remains poor in a country where only 34 percent of the cases are under control.

Of the more than 30 million patients in China, about 80 percent fail to effectively control the disease and less than 5 percent have received standard treatment, Lin said.

A 36-year-old patient surnamed Wang, from Hebei province, said he used to be hospitalized three times a year in Beijing for serious asthma attacks. He was diagnosed with the disease after having it for more than a year.

"I frequently felt out of breath and had to take a rest when climbing up several steps," he said.

Drug therapy and a surgical procedure called bronchial thermoplasty helped put him back on his feet after he had to use a wheelchair.

Wang Chen called for standardized treatment and improved access to drug treatment for asthma patients.

Source: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/

A cloud over large-scale events after deadly Shanghai stampede

Shanghai police officers stand guard at Nanjing East Road in the Bund on Saturday night, site of the tragic stampede on New Year's Eve that claimed 36 lives. The accident occurred Wednesday night as tens of thousands of revellers assembled in Shanghai's historic riverfront walk to watch a New Year skyline show in the Pudong financial area opposite of Huangpu River.

Guyi Garden has confirmed that their lantern exhibition, one of the two major annual lantern exhibitions held for the last seven years in Shanghai, will be canceled this year out of safety concerns, reported The Beijing Morning Post on Tuesday.

Guyi Garden said they decided to cancel the exhibit because the event was oversubscribed given the limited capacity of the garden, based on attendance figures from former years.

Instead, they will enhance security to better prepare for the Spring Festival Temple Fair, another large-scale event during Spring Festival.

The cancellation could be a reflection of the concerns and lack of confidence in crowd control after the unexpected deadly stampede in Shanghai. Concerns have also spread to Beijing.

Many supermarkets in the capital noticed their customers said they would cancel their planned business promotions to avoid the repetition of the Shanghai New Year countdown tragedy, according to The Beijing News on Tuesday.

"Not all the large-scale promotion events must be cancelled," the staff of Beijing Municipal Commission of Commerce stressed, "but reporting the event in advance is now even more important."

Thirty-six people died in a fatal stampede during New Year celebrations late in the night of Dec 31 in Shanghai due to the lack of crowd control. After the incident, Shanghai called off all New Year celebrations in public places.

Source: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/

Shanghai government responsible for deadly stampede: China tourism body

China's National Tourism Administrator said Shanghai authorities had failed to take precautions to prevent the deadly stampede that killed more than three dozen people on New Year's Eve.

SHANGHAI: China's National Tourism Administrator says the Shanghai government is responsible for the deadly stampede that killed more than three dozen people on New Year's Eve.

In a document published on its website, the agency said the city's authorities had failed in taking precautions to prevent the incident from happening.

The comments come nearly a week after the tragedy took place and authorities have so far provided little explanation for what happened at Shanghai's iconic riverfront.

Authorities said they understood from family members that they had wanted to go to the stampede site to mourn the dead.

Hence, additional barricades were put up and the entire area cordoned off to maintain order and prevent overcrowding - the very same measures that should have been in place that fateful night to prevent the tragedy from happening.

Earlier, emotions ran high as anguished parents went to the incident site to grieve their children on the traditional Chinese seventh day of mourning. Most of the dead were students in their twenties.

"In terms of public safety, Shanghai is known to be better than other cities. It's really unexpected that something like this has happened," said a member of the public.

China's National Tourism Administration said the Shanghai government is responsible for the public's safety even though no event was planned for that night.

Earlier on, officials had said they did not bring in extra reinforcements that night because there was no countdown celebration on the riverfront.

Quoting the law in a document published online, the tourism administration said that when incidents of such nature occur, the government is obliged to be prepared, vigilant and responsive.

Authorities in Shanghai have yet to respond and have also not provided further details on their investigation into the incident.

Meantime, there was controlled grieving on-site as police blocked off public access to where the mishap allegedly took place. Mourners, who are next-of-kin of the victims, are heavily escorted away from the public's eye.

When asked, officials said it is unclear how long the cordons will stay, providing little comfort to families who lost their loved ones on New Year's Eve.

Source: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/

Controversy erupts after college blames victims

A screenshot of the website of Modern College of Northwest University shows a notice that says the Shanghai tragedy proves its holiday policies are "absolutely correct".

BEIJING - A college in Northwest China has been lambasted for issuing a controversial statement about the fatal New Year's Eve stampede in Shanghai, which left 36 people dead.

The Modern College of Northwest University in Xi'an City, capital of Shaanxi province, said on Friday that the tragedy proved that its holiday policies were "utterly correct".

In late December, the college reportedly banned its students from celebrating Christmas and instead on Christmas Eve made them watch traditional cultural films, which invited a storm of criticism.

Its official microblog account said that Chinese traditional festivals and culture were fading away as more people embraced Western traditions.

In an editorial titled "Shanghai stampede tragedy proves our holiday management utterly correct", posted on its website, the college said that if such a stampede occurred on Christmas Eve in Xi'an, the value of the college's holiday management would be "more self-evident".

It continued to bash public holidays by saying that the youth had become "overly infatuated" with Western holidays after decades of westernization in China, and that the stampede was a result of loose in college and university management.

The post has become a hot topic on the Internet, with some angry netizens calling the college "shameless" for justifying its value through the tragedy.

"It looks to me that the college is taking pleasure in others' misfortune," read one comment.

"In their logic, 2014 saw many plane crashes and I never took a flight, so that proves me 'utterly correct'?" said another netizen.

Others are more tolerant, saying that even though the wording might be a little rough, in essence the article made sense.

The college, perhaps in reaction to the media frenzy over its post, changed the title to "Deeply grieving the loss of our compatriots in the Shanghai stampede tragedy", but the content of the post remains unchanged.

Tan Kejian, a research fellow with the School of Sociology under the Shanxi Academy of Social Sciences, said the college's attitude toward holiday celebrations was negative and should not be adopted.

"You should not stop eating because of having hiccups," Tan said, quoting an old Chinese saying.

Instead of banning celebrations, authorities should ramp up preventive measures to avoid similar disasters, he added.

Tens of thousands of people assembled in Shanghai's historic riverfront walk, in the Pudong financial area, on Wednesday night to ring in the New Year. Most of those that lost their lives were young people.

Source: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/