What India can learn from China’s approach to improving air quality [Commentary]

• Cities in India, especially in the Delhi-National Capital Region, are once again facing severe air pollution. This has renewed interest in how China managed to control its pollution.
• China reduced particulate pollution by nearly 40% not only through measures such as coal caps and vehicle standards, but also by redesigning its governance approach to pollution control.
• China’s experience shows that lasting air quality improvement comes from aligning political priorities with scientific evidence, setting enforceable targets, ensuring transparency, and holding accountable.
• The views in this commentary are that of the author.

See All Key Ideas

I spent my winter break in Kolkata this year. Although I have worked on air pollution for nearly eight years, this was the first time my parents and neighbours remarked that they were relieved I had escaped Delhi’s toxic air. In previous years, their concern had always been whether I could cope with Delhi’s bitter winter cold. This year felt different, not just because of how bad the air was, but because the crisis was impossible to ignore. Delhi’s citizens took to the streets to demand action on clean air, and social media was abuzz with reels and memes on pollution. December, despite the drop in farm fires, turned out to be more polluted than October and November.

In the midst of all this, as Delhi was grappling with severe pollution levels in mid-December, the spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in India took to X (formerly Twitter) to offer help, sharing how China cleaned up its pollution. This, in turn, triggered a series of articles by air pollution experts in India, asking: China could clean up its air, why can’t India? Almost all of them point to the same set of measures — coal caps, industrial shutdowns, tighter vehicle emission standards, and the scrapping of older vehicles — adopted under China’s Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan launched in 2013. And rightly so. Since 2013, China’s particulate pollution levels have declined by nearly 40%. We at the Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) estimate that this improvement could potentially help Chinese residents live two years longer. The AQLI is an index and interactive data visualisation platform developed by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC).

But this focus on what China did often obscures a more critical question: How did those actions lead to reduced pollution? The real lesson for India lies less in the specific measures themselves and more in the principles that shaped these measures and made them effective.

Tracing the history of air pollution control and broader environmental governance in China brings four such principles into sharper focus.

Pollution hangs over the Taj Mahal. India’s National Clean Air Programme, launched in 2019, focuses mainly on particulate matter, especially PM10. Image by Buiobuione via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Mainstreaming the environment within the growth agenda

The first principle focused on mainstreaming environmental protection as a growth agenda. Beginning in the mid-2000s, environmental protection was elevated within China’s policy priorities, clearly signalling to local governments that the era of singular GDP-centric growth was over. Sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions quotas were incorporated into the performance evaluation system for top-level bureaucrats, including city mayors and party secretaries, as early as 2005. It became a factor in their promotion, sanctioning, or removal.

In 2006, a new measure of growth, Green GDP, was introduced. It accounted for the negative impacts of environmental damage and was therefore lower than GDP purely based on economic growth. This early realignment mattered because it made environmental outcomes a formal responsibility of local governments well before China declared a “War on Pollution” in 2013.

India’s vision of becoming ‘Viksit’ (developed) by 2047 recognises climate change as an impediment to sustainable development. It acknowledges the need to address it to secure a better future for its citizens. However, air pollution has not received the same level of recognition, particularly with respect to the growing body of research linking it directly to premature death and disease. At AQLI, we estimate that the average Indian stands to lose 3.5 years of life expectancy due to air pollution. Greater acknowledgement of these impacts could prompt a more urgent policy response.

Beyond particulate fixes

Second, China treated particulate matter not as a stand-alone pollutant, but as part of a multi-pollutant chemical system. China’s air-quality strategy was built on the understanding that PM2.5 is the product of a complex chemical system resulting from multiple pollutant emissions, including nitrous oxides, sulfur oxides, and ammonia, rather than a single pollutant. Well before PM2.5 concentration targets were introduced, China had already implemented binding emission-reduction targets for SO₂ and NOₓ through the 11th Five-Year Plan (2005–10) and the Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction programme in 2011. Initially driven by concerns around acid rain, these controls were later recognised as essential precursors to fine particulate pollution.

A traffic jam in TamIl Nadu, alongside ongoing road construction. Ambient pollution levels are shaped by weather conditions and economic activity. Representative image by T. Uzhavan via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The 2013 Plan tightened these emission caps and added PM2.5 concentration targets, reinforcing three ideas: particulate pollution cannot be addressed in isolation from its chemical precursors; sustained reductions require cutting emissions, not merely managing ambient concentrations; and sector-wide restructuring is unavoidable because precursor control demands changes in energy, industry, transport, and fuel use.

In contrast, India’s National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), launched in 2019, focuses on particulate matter — especially PM10 — as the main pollution problem, rather than treating air pollution as a chemical system that requires integrated management. This approach is visible in repeated delays and uneven enforcement of measures such as stricter emission standards for thermal power plants, scrapping older vehicles, and improving checks on vehicles already on the road.

As long as particulate matter is tackled in isolation from precursor gases like NOₓ and SO₂, India risks spending time and resources on solutions that look visible but do little to change the air people actually breathe — such as smog guns and smog towers.

Targets that can be enforced

Third, China paired ambient concentration targets with binding commitments to reduce emissions.

A defining feature of China’s approach was that ambient concentration targets were layered on top of binding emissions-reduction targets for pollutants such as SO2 and NOx. Accountability focused on emissions, which are directly linked to policy effort, rather than concentrations alone.

Ambient pollution levels are shaped by weather conditions and economic activity and cannot always be cleanly attributed to policy action. Emissions-based targets, by contrast, make responsibility easier to identify and enforce. For instance, thermal power plants and large-scale industries emit SO2, a part of which becomes a fraction of particulate matter. So, emissions cuts at the industry level are reflected in reduced particulate concentrations.

India’s NCAP, on the other hand, relies solely on a concentration-based target for PM10, thereby weakening the link between policy effort and air quality impacts. Initiatives such as the annual Clean Air Survey rankings attempt to address this gap by evaluating sectoral actions and incentivising competition among cities. But in the absence of binding emissions targets and a framework that links sectoral actions to verified emission reductions, they remain an imperfect proxy for accountability.

Delhi’s skyline shrouded in pollution. From October onwards, air quality deteriorated rapidly. In November and December, pollution levels frequently crossed severe and hazardous thresholds. Image by Shweta Thakur Nanda.

What sustained changes require

A fourth pillar of China’s air-quality strategy was the use of transparency and central supervision to reinforce accountability.

Even before the 2013 plan, China invested heavily in environmental information disclosure. In 2008, it adopted the Measures on Open Environmental Information, mandating the public release of air and water quality data, pollutant emissions, environmental impact assessment outcomes, pollution fees and penalties, and the identities of enterprises that violate environmental standards.

Civil-society initiatives, such as the Pollution Information Transparency Index, amplified these efforts by ranking cities based on the quality of their disclosure. It created reputational pressure on local governments. Transparency went beyond real-time air quality data; it made both officials and polluters visible to citizens.

Accountability was further reinforced in 2016 with the launch of the Central Environmental Inspection system, under which local governments were subjected to periodic, high-level inspections by central authorities. These inspections did not replace regulation; they ensured that existing rules were taken seriously.

India today also has much of the information that China made public. But it remains fragmented across platforms, uneven in quality, and often inaccessible. For instance, while Air Quality Index values are reported, physical data on pollutants remains difficult to access. It limits meaningful public engagement. Tools such as the Central Pollution Control Boards (CPCB)’s air-quality dashboard and the PRANA portal are steps in the right direction. Yet, without fuller disclosure of emissions data and clearer links between data, enforcement, and consequences, transparency risks remaining informational rather than engaging.

To sum it all up, China’s experience shows that durable air quality improvements are not the result of any single policy. They emerge from a sequence that aligns political priorities, scientific evidence, enforceable targets, public scrutiny, and bureaucratic accountability. The policy sequence was in turn guided by a broader shift in how well-being was understood, extending beyond economic growth to include the health costs of pollution.

India has articulated an ambitious vision of development and well-being. Yet air pollution continues to threaten millions of lives across the country. The foundations required for sustained air quality improvement take years to build, but this should not delay the urgency with which India addresses air pollution. With the NCAP now in its eighth year, and with growing global evidence on what works, the challenge for India is no longer knowing what needs to be done but acting in time.

The author is the Director of Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC).

Banner image: Citizens protest for action against air pollution in New Delhi in November 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)