Yes, You Can Actually Invest in China’s Worsening Air Pollution

A woman wears a face mask next to traffic shrouded in heavy smog on December 1, 2015 in Beijing, China.

AUTHORITIES in Beijing said they plan to do more than just wait for the wind to blow away smog.

“Lately, the smog is really serious that folks are not willing to go outside, so they phone us to inquire”, said Li Hui, owner of several BYD vehicle dealers, which focus on environmentally friendly automobiles.

Li also said law enforcement of rules aimed at cutting pollution, such as suspending work at polluting businesses, should be improved.

As the smog eased over China’s capital, Beijing authorities lifted the air pollution red alert Thursday, Bloomberg reported. He said questions about the e6 pure electrical version of the company were upward by 8-9 percent.

“Bad pollution intrudes on, and you also do not have a monkey king?” reads another ad on BYD’s official microblog, revealing a guy in a cloud of pollution calling for help from China’s fabled Monkey King hero. It goes on to say the car’s purifying system can “say goodbye to big city pollution”.

While this tactic does have some chances of succeeding in humiliating those targeted -honor and dignity are very important in the Chinese society – it will probably do little to curb Beijing’s real problems, which lie with state-operated activities like coal power plants and large construction sites, together with the ever-growing fleet of vehicles.

Drivers opting to leave their petrol-powered cars at home were offered free chauffeur-driven rides in the company’s electric cars on Monday through Wednesday, Yang said.

Automakers can’t be certain the increase in inquiries will translate into sales.

If there was any silver lining to the events, it came in a flurry of interest for electric cars on sale in China.

A recent study by Carnegie Mellon University found that a shift to electric cars in China might cause more air pollution because of the nation’s emissions-intensive electricity grid.

What’s more, Beijing has a history in going witch-hunting when it comes to pollution, launching an attack against street food vendors in 2013 for their coal-burning barbecues.