During the past week Beijing has enjoyed predominantly bright blue skies, a sight many residents said they have not seen for a decade, as air pollution has become a daily headache for people in the capital.

Many hope the blue skies will become a more frequent sight as top authorities listed promoting air quality as a key part of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration process in their guiding document.

Another document on air pollution prevention coordination for 2015, issued in April, outlined more clearly defined roles and responsibilities of cities in the region.

As a first step, a coordination team on vehicle emissions control was established on June 4. The team shares supervision data of vehicle emissions among authorities of the whole region, performs spot tests for new vehicles and fines vehicles that fail to meet environmental standards.

The fines are regarded as a huge breakthrough in enforcement of air quality laws.

In the past, if Beijing's environmental officials found a vehicle with emissions higher than the standard, they did not have the power to issue a ticket or fine on the spot, but could only call authorities in the city where the vehicle is registered.

According to Han Yingjian, a researcher on vehicle emission scontrol at the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei have different standards.

"A car that meets the standard in Hebei might fail to meet the standard in Beijing," he said.

Han said one of the jobs of the newly founded coordination team was to propel the regions to form a unified standard.

More coordination teams may be set up in the future to deal with other kinds of industrial pollution, said Han.

A larger coordination plan involves not only the three regions, but also nearby Shanxi and Shandong provinces and the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, and will cover vehicle emissions, coal burning, surplus production capacity and seaport and ship pollution. In the long run, the plan is expected to propel the aforementioned provinces and regions to upgrade industries and optimize their economic structures.

The plan requires further coordination of economic interests among the regions, said Chang Jiwen, a senior researcher on environmental studies at the Development Research Center of the State Council. As the regions have different industries with different pollution sources, it is vital to compensate them to make the environmental protection sustainable, he added.

Chang said the more ambitious plan of upgrading industries in the whole region to curb air pollution in Hebei and other provinces was vital to maintaining air quality in Beijing. "Hopefully blue skies will be back," he said.

zhangzhouxiang@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 06/19/2015 page10)