AIR QUALITY AND EMVIRONMENTAL MONITORING IN CHINA BY THE YEAR OF 2000 
Chunming Cheng 
National Environmental Monitoring Centre, China 
Abstract 
This report is an estimation of the urban air quaiity in China by the year of 2000. 
It is bared on the analysis of urban air quality and its changing tendency in Chinese 
cities in 1980s. It analysed the predicting of condition in pollution meteorology and 
the planning on the exploitation of energy sources in 2000. it predicted the results 
with regression analysis, and compared with the situation of air pollution in American 
to see the influence of air- pollution in China to the world, we could see it is an 
onerous task for China to control and harness the air pollution. Through practices of 
monitoring for 17 years, China has set up an environmental monitoring network which 
could reflects the overall urban air quality. The effort in 1970s and 1980s, it laid a 
foundation for further development on air quaiity monitoring in 2000, 
Key Words'* Air-quality, Tendency-ana lysis, Environment-predicting 
1 INTRODUCTION 
The human beings have been aware of the importance 
of 1iving environment from the bitter lessons of 
the environmental pollution accidents. The inter 
national pollution connected the people in diffe 
rent parts of the world together becouse of the 
same interests. Now, there are three main environ 
mental problems which demand prompt, solution 1 the 
increasing carbon dioxide ( (D2 1 aggravated the 
'GREEN-HOUSE'; the ozonosphere was destroied and 
’OZONE-HOI£' appeared in South Pole; the acid rain 
aggravated acidification and expanded areas. These 
environmental crises concern our future living 
environment, so people have been forced to unite to 
discuss the facing dangers and create the world 
future together, for there is only one earth in the 
universe so we have the common future. 
China is such a big country that it has one-fifth 
of the population in the world. Although it's a 
developing country, it's energy consumption and the 
air emissions come out at the top of the world. For 
example: from 1950 to 1989, the coal consumption in 
China has increased by 2500 % or so. The output of 
coal in 1989 was in excess of one billon tons. And 
the coal consumption were always over 70 % of the 
total amounts of energy consumption in 1980s. We 
can not completely change this situation until the 
year of 2000, while the ratio of coal consumption 
with the energy consumption will be 70 % to 75 % . 
Thus the long-term characteristic about air pollu 
tion in China which is coal smoke pollution was de 
termined. The rapidly increasing energy consumption 
intensified the air pollution, and exerted the 
pressure on the job of air pollution prevention. 
Since 1973, China has mad' a highly headway in the 
respect of environment protection. At the same time 
the environmental monitoring has rep idly developed: 
the specialized monitoring personnel incread from 
10,000 in 1981 to over 25,000 in 1988.And more than 
1800 monitoring stations in different grades have 
been set. up. We can get. millions of air monitoring 
data from these stations each year.The national air 
quality monitoring network was established by the 
end of 1980s ( M.X.Wang, et al, 1986 ), which laid 
a foundation in the respects about improving the 
quality of monitoring data and reflecting the siua- 
tion of air pollution timely. 
A study set the tasks on 'Environment Prediction Of 
China in The Year 2000 ' ( W.X.Wang, et al, 1987 ) 
which are quoted in this article many times. But 
becouse the materials and data on the research is 
limited, and it lack depth knowledge on pollution 
pattern, the result of prediction must be effected 
( D.W.Zhau, et al, 1987 ). So, in this article mi' 
focus was on the analysis of the regularity of air 
pollution, and took the analysis on the condition 
of China air pollution in the main cities in 1980s 
as the bases, and try to calculated the predicting 
result in reguard of the energy source,meteorology, 
pollution control and other respects. 
2 THE PRESENT SITUATION OF CHINA AIR QUALITY 
2.1 The State of The Main Pollutants 
Sulfur Dioxide ( S02 ) 
In 1980s, the national annual average level of S02 
was about 0.1 mg/m3 or so. There is only one wave, 
but its amplitude is within 15%, as shown in Fig.l. 
Fig-1 - During 1980s, tendency of S02 concentration 
in Chinese main cities. 
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