OTOH, China needs to do a
OTOH, China needs to do a bunch of things to get this situation under control. I've visited Beijing and Shanghai in 08 before and observed no hybrids on the road, at the time. Prius sales are almost 0 there.
They need to adopt car emission standards similar to that of California and perhaps require that ALL new cars sold there adhere to CA's PZEV standards or better (like SULEV20). From the bad traffic I've seen, there's sure a lot of idling and stop and go. They should REQUIRE auto-start/stop systems on all new vehicles, at minimum. Mild hybrid or full-hybrid systems would be even better. They should encourage everyone to move towards that.
China needs to further speed up their adoption of non-air polluting electricity generation (e.g. solar, wind, hydro) and adopt some grid storage technology. They need to also adopt very strict standards on their power plants. They also should shift from coal to less polluting sources (e.g. natural gas). They should also adopt strict building codes like California Title 24 standards to reduce energy consumption, to reduce the need to pollute.
Perhaps they should also implement a congestion charge for non-EVs and non-PHEVs (similar to what I've heard in the UK).
Obviously, they need to clamp down in pollution from factories as well.
Hopefully the environmental officials over there can learn from California's model, can come up w/some very strict rules and has the power to enforce them.