"In the rush hour, the cars raise the dust on the road, and the smoke from the factories floats everywhere. A new waste-water treatment factory is being built and by 2,000, Xian wants to be treating half domestic outflows.A day in Xian is almost guaranteed to produce a blinding headache, and even some of the locals are complaining. On the way to the airport, the taxi driver said it was worst in the early evening. Xian, richer than other cities because of its tourist industry, is making a start.
A 250-mile pipe is being laid from the gas-fields in northern Shaanxi, and by next July three-quarters of residents should be connected to the system. The official estimate is that China will have to spend 450bn yuan (pounds 36bn) over the next five years in an environmental clean-up. Ran Canli, 80, said: "Along my corridor, every household has a coal-fired stove, and when we cook, there is a lot of smoke and dust." Less then one in seven households uses gas-fired heating.The government knows the answers to these problems, but cannot afford them. Industrial use is high but domestic consumption is a also major factor. Its 6.7 million residents and the city's industry burn 5 million tonnes of coal a year. Coal consumption, currently at 420 million tonnes a year, is forecast to rise to 540 million tonnes by 2,000, and 800 million tonnes by 2010.Xian is a typical Chinese smokestack city.
Across China, the main problems are industrial waste and an overwhelming reliance on coal, which provides three-quarters of the country's energy resources and electricity. The annual output of sulphur dioxide has reached 190,000 tonnes; meanwhile, 80 per cent of Xian's domestic waste water flushes straight into the river system.Yet Xian, the capital of inland Shaanxi province, is by no means the worst in China; in an official 1994 survey, it was placed 14th on the list of most polluted Chinese cities. You can't see a person very far away."The figures are terrifying. According to Song Zhongjian, the vice-director of the city's Environmental Protection Bureau, every month 25 tonnes of dust falls per square kilometre, most spewed out from Xian's coal-fired industry and domestic heating systems.