Chinese authorities declared a milestone in January when they announced that Beijing had “essentially eliminated” heavy air pollution, a dramatic turnaround for a capital once infamous for choking smog and soot-darkened streets. Official data showed that in the past year there was just one day when minimum air-quality standards were not met, compared with 58 days in 2013. Blue winter skies, once a rarity dependent on mountain winds, have become the norm, symbolising a public policy success that the government has promoted heavily at home and abroad.
Yet, as reported by Times UK, the environmental triumph carries a human cost that is being borne quietly in the countryside surrounding the capital. Just miles from Beijing’s luxury shopping malls, centrally heated apartments and political elite, poorer villagers are enduring winters without heat after being forced to abandon coal, the fuel that once kept their homes warm.
A central driver of Beijing’s cleaner air has been the sweeping ban on coal and firewood across the capital and neighbouring Hebei province, extending as far as the Great Wall and beyond. Dirty coal was replaced with cleaner-burning gas, sharply reducing pollution but dramatically increasing household energy costs. For wealthier urban residents, often shielded by collective and subsidised heating systems, the transition has been manageable. For rural families living on fragile incomes, it has been devastating.
In Dashao village, about 50 miles from central Beijing, Jiang Naifeng, 59, and her husband Qi Lifeng, 68, have not switched on their gas heating for two years, despite the sub-zero winters of the North China Plain. Jiang said that while coal smoke had been bad for their health, gas heating was simply unaffordable. With no stable income and rising living costs, the couple have chosen to endure the cold rather than face bills they cannot pay.
The contrast between rural hardship and urban comfort has not gone unnoticed. As Times UK noted, a wave of commentary, including in state-run media, has drawn attention to the plight of Hebei’s rural poor, though some of the most critical articles have since been removed by censors. Hu Xijin, one of China’s most prominent nationalist commentators, wrote that city residents enjoying blue skies owed a “debt of gratitude” to rural communities absorbing the costs of the coal-to-gas transition, arguing that environmental progress could not come at the expense of farmers left without adequate subsidies.
Few dispute that China’s war on pollution has delivered tangible results. Beijing’s average concentration of PM2.5 particles fell to 27 micrograms per cubic metre in 2025, below the government’s long-standing target for the first time since measurements began. The campaign gained urgency ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when international scrutiny and domestic pressure forced the Communist Party to confront the health risks of smog. Major steelworks were shut, electric vehicles encouraged and environmental monitoring tightened, even as foreign embassies published their own air-quality data.
Ultimately, however, the most significant factor was the elimination of coal as a household fuel across Beijing and Hebei, a province larger than England and Wales with a population of 75 million. Hebei’s residents are far poorer than those of China’s major cities, reflecting a long-standing divide between urban and rural economies that widened after the late 1980s, when policy priorities shifted decisively towards keeping city populations content.
The government did offer subsidies to help rural households install gas boilers and offset early bills, but these were limited in scope and duration. In cities, by contrast, heating is often centrally managed, heavily subsidised and far cheaper. Even liquefied natural gas canisters tend to cost less in urban areas. In Hebei, subsidies are now expiring, and President Xi Jinping’s opposition to what he calls “welfarism” makes renewals uncertain.
For families such as Jiang and Qi, the sums simply do not add up. When their daughter lived with them after giving birth, they kept the heating on at its lowest setting, but the winter gas bill still reached 6,000 yuan, nearly a third of their annual income. Qi’s pension amounts to just 2,640 yuan a year, Jiang earns around 15,000 yuan from farm labour, and the couple receive 2,000 yuan for renting out their land, leaving them with less than 20,000 yuan annually. From that, they must also pay health insurance costs, while savings were wiped out by flooding in 2023, an increasingly frequent event in northern China as climate change alters weather patterns.
Daytime offers some relief, as villagers wrap themselves in padded jackets and seek out the winter sun. Nights are far harder, especially for families with children who cannot tolerate the cold. Neighbours say that even with heating on the lowest setting, indoor temperatures barely reach tolerable levels, forcing parents to choose between warmth and financial strain.
The issue poses a broader challenge for Xi as he seeks to revive consumer confidence and rebalance China’s economy away from its reliance on property and heavy industry. Critics argue that households struggling to afford basic heating are unlikely to spend on discretionary goods. Although the finance ministry has promised additional funding for local subsidy schemes, it has provided few details. Attempts by official newspapers to highlight the higher cost of rural gas compared with city heating have been swiftly censored, underscoring the political sensitivity of a policy success that has left many quietly shivering in Beijing’s winter wonderland.
