China’s capital woke up to orange-tinted skies Saturday as the strongest sandstorm so far this year hit the country’s north, delaying some flights at Beijing’s airport and prompting a dust warning for Seoul.
The sky glowed and a thin film of sand covered Beijing, causing workers to muffle their faces in vast Tiananmen Square.
The city’s weather bureau gave the air quality a rare hazardous ranking.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Air quality is “very bad for the health,” China’s national weather bureau warned. It said people should cover their mouths when outside and keep doors and windows closed.
China’s expanding deserts now cover one-third of the country as a result of overgrazing, deforestation, urban sprawl and drought. The shifting sands have led to a sharp increase in sandstorms, the grit from which can travel as far as the western US.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences has estimated that the number of sandstorms has jumped six-fold in the past 50 years to around two dozen a year.
The latest sandstorm has also affected the regions of Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia and the provinces of Shanxi, Shaanxi and Hebei.
As the sandstorm moved southeast, South Korea’s national weather agency issued a yellow dust advisory for Seoul and other parts of the country. Chun Youngsin, a researcher at the Korea Meteorological Administration, said the yellow dust was expected to hit the Korean peninsula beginning yesterday afternoon and it would be “the worst yellow dust” this year.
Some flights at Beijing’s international airport were delayed but eventually took off, said a woman answering inquiries from concerned passengers on the airport hot line.
China has planted thousands of acres of vegetation in recent years in an effort to stop the spread of deserts in its north and west, but experts have said the work will take decades. China’s dust storms were at their worst in the 1950s and 1960s after campaigns to raise farm and factory output following the 1949 communist revolution stripped the soil of vegetation.
“I think this kind of natural disaster is caused by human activity, but I don’t know the exact reason, and I don’t know exactly what we can do to prevent this,” Shi Chunyan, a Beijing resident, said of yesterday’s storm.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in