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There has been more discussion recently about China’s industry (and its pollution) moving west, away from past centers of development on the coast to new horizons inland. I have written an undergraduate and master's thesis on this topic, and thought I would share some useful background information about these trends and what they mean for China’s future development and emissions. 12 years ago, China's east coast was swathed in smog so thick we needed a new word for the phenomenon: "Airpocalypse". Beijing’s air, described as “chewable”, became a national embarrassment, or emergency depending on your thesaurus. In January, the capital’s PM2.5 level reached 993 μg/m³, ~40 times the WHO standard of 25 μg/m³ (the WHO has since revised its standard to 15 μg/m³). I’m singling out Beijing in this example, but many other cities suffered from suffocating air pollution, from the Fenwei Plains in northern China (coal country) to the Yangtze and Pearl River deltas, the central hubs of Mainland Chin

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• Vincent Yang