What's causing the pollution?

And is the CCP's solution working? 

Or is it making things worse?

Welcome to China Uncensored. I'm Chris Chappell.

After a long, cold winter, spring  is finally just around the corner.

Birds are chirping. Flowers are  blooming. And the air is full of...sand.

Beijing on Monday was covered with thick  

brown dust. China's meteorological agency  called it the biggest sandstorm in a decade.

The sky literally turned orange  as the sandstorm and pollution  

sent air quality readings off the scale. 

How far off the scale?

Some of you longtime viewers of China Uncensored  may remember me talking about the time the US  

Embassy in China called the air quality  crazy bad. That happened back in 2010. 

Crazy bad was when the PM 2.5 air  quality index hit more than 500.

This past Monday, it hit 700. And the PM 10 index,  

which measures slightly bigger air  pollution particles, was over 9000. 

Life imitates art.

And 9,000 is more than 180  times the healthy amount.

So if more than 500 is Crazy Bad, more than  9,000 is Time to Get Out of China bad. 

Yeah, definitely time to get out of China.

"It looks like the end of the world.  Feels like it's impossible to go outside."

But you know what, humans are resilient.  Even during the end of the world,  

people were walking around,  constantly looking at their phones.

That must be a really important email.

Maybe everyone is on their phones because  they're checking the air quality index. 

But you know what? At least everyone has  masks now, thanks to the coronavirus.

Although you have to wonder whether  a surgical mask is really enough to  

keep you from inhaling all that dust. 

This guy has the right idea. Until he's  arrested for looking like a Hong Kong protester.

But as some people braved the sandstorm  outside, Chinese netizens responded to  

the post-apocalyptic environment the  only way they could: they memed it.

Like I said, humans are resilient. 

Although the photos I just  showed you were all from Beijing,  

the sandstorm actually stretched across China.  

It whipped across 12 different provinces, from  Beijing all the way to Gansu and Xinjiang. 

But of course it makes the international  news because it affects Beijing,  

where all the foreign correspondents are.

Plus, if we were talking about  a sandstorm that hit Gansu,  

Americans would be like, what's a  Gansu? Oh wait, is that the knife?

Meanwhile, in Xinjiang, the sandstorm was actually  a good thing, because the persecuted Uyghurs  

could use it to hide from all  of the surveillance cameras.

Years ago, there were frequent sandstorms  in Beijing, as well as just terrible air  

pollution in general. Smog and sandstorms would  be especially bad around this time of year. 

After tons of bad press, the  Chinese Communist Party did take  

action to improve air quality,  like by banning coal usage. 

And it did improve the air  quality in general in Beijing. 

But that may be in jeopardy again. Because  the Chinese Communist Party is once again  

expanding their coal plant  capacity to boost the economy.

Which means more air pollution. But don't  worry! Under the Paris Climate Agreement,  

China has until 2030 to  reach peak carbon emissions. 

That's plenty of time to build more coal plants. 

But my favorite Chinese state-run media,  

the Global Times, would like everyone to know  that there are blue skies again in Beijing.

And also that the sandstorm  originated in Mongolia.

And that it's definitely not related  to the failure of one of the Communist  

Party's biggest environmental projects.  Which I'll tell you about after the break.

Welcome back. Northern China has seen the worst  

sandstorm in a decade. And the Chinese  Communist Party would like you know,  

it has absolutely nothing to do with the failure  of China's Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program.

What is the Three-North  Shelterbelt Forest Program?  

It's also known as the Great Green Wall  or sometimes the Green Great Wall. They  

really should get their names straight.  Anyway, it's a massive plan started in 1978  

to plant millions of trees to stop  the northern deserts from spreading. 

Sure, it sounds cool. But it's just like  the Chinese Communist Party's other massive  

environmental engineering projects, like  the South-North Water Transfer Project,  

or the Three Gorges Dam. The plan is to conquer  nature, whether that's a good idea or not.

The most recent phase of the Great  Green Wall, started in the mid-2000s,  

called for “planting more than 9 million acres  of forest at a cost of up to $8 billion.”

But it turns out there's a problem. It's  hard to plant trees in areas that have  

been desert for thousands of years.  And it's probably also a bad idea.

One prominent ecologist has talked about how  the Great Green Wall has “accelerated ecological  

degeneration by putting pressure on precious  water resources in arid and semi-arid regions.”

In one arid part of Gansu province, “Of the 53,000  hectares of trees planted in the last few decades,  

a quarter has died and the rest are dwarf trees,  lacking any capacity to protect the soil.”

Meanwhile, the trees sucked up what little water  

was in the soil. That caused the groundwater  level to drop by as much as 131 feet.

So this attempt to conquer  nature by planting trees  

has actually caused the region to become  even more of a desert than it was before.

Another problem is that authorities have planted  mostly the same tree species, which means  

that disease can easily wipe them out.

“The vulnerability to disease, compounded with  its rapid exhaustion of soil and water resources,  

makes single-species forests 'green deserts.'”

So this Great Green Wall is  costing billions of dollars,  

it's not really working, and in some areas  it's actually making the problem worse.

Environmentalism with Chinese characteristics.

Ecologists have proposed just restoring  the natural grasslands instead,  

which would be much easier and  better for the environment. 

Well that's not going to happen.  

Because this massive political campaign is  about planting trees, not stupid grass. Local  

officials need to be able to claim they've planted  millions of trees, so they can get promoted. Duh.

And according to Chinese state-run media,  

the Green Great Wall is definitely  keeping the sand at bay.

Except when it's not.

And now it's time for me to answer  a question from a loyal viewer who  

supports China Uncensored on the  crowdfunding website Patreon.

Ringleader asks, 

Chris, we know that most of the China/Russia  deals are a marriage of convenience.  

How long do you think it will take till  they decide to turn on one another?

Why Ringleader, are you suggesting that these  bestest buddies might turn on each other  

when their relationship is no longer useful?  

Do gold-plated friendship  medals mean nothing anymore? 

What about pancakes? They bonded over pancakes!

I mean, Xi Jinping even got special Russian  

ice cream from “best and bosom  friend” Putin for his birthday.

I never want to see the words Putin, Xi,  and bosom in the same sentence again. 

Anyway, Ringleader, you're right these  BFFs could drop each other at any time.  

But they won't in the foreseeable future. 

That's because there's one thing that unites these  two, more than friendship medals, or ice cream,  

or even pancakes: Their common enemy, the United  States. And as long as they need each other to  

oppose the US in the United Nations, or elsewhere  around the world, this friendship is rock solid.

Thanks for your question, Ringleader.  

If you'd like me to answer your question on  an episode, Go to Patreon.com/ChinaUncensored  

to see how you can contribute a dollar or more  per episode to help us keep this show going.

Once again, I'm Chris Chappell.  Thanks for watching China Uncensored.