Latest / The Front / How China crushed Beijing’s crazy traffic noise

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How China crushed Beijing’s crazy traffic noise · The Front

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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  Speaker 1: It's Monday, February two, twenty twenty six. Outlaw Desi Freeman
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: is still on the run, six months after allegedly murdering
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  Speaker 1: expanding their search, with fresh details to be revealed this morning.
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  Speaker 1: We'll be covering that live at the Australian dot com
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  Speaker 1: dot A drop the virtue signaling culture wars and teach
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  Speaker 1: kids to read and understand history. That's the cry from
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  Speaker 1: the boss of the federal government's Australian Education Research Organization,
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  Speaker 1: Jenny Donovan. She tells The Australian today, too many kids
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  Speaker 1: are starting high school illiterate, and too many teachers are
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  Speaker 1: wasting time defending failed fads.
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  Speaker 2: The world's most most.
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  Speaker 1: Powerful command economy has turned the volume down on Beijing's
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  Speaker 1: famously cacophonous traffic and now the city's twenty million plus
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  Speaker 1: residents can hear bird song even in peak hour.
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  Speaker 2: So how did they do it and why? North Asia
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  Speaker 2: correspondent Yooni Bishan is here.
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  Speaker 1: This is what Asia is supposed to sound like, and
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  Speaker 1: it's what Beijing used to sound like too.
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  Speaker 3: But now so behind me, right now, there are six
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  Speaker 3: lanes of traffic. It's obviously a very busy road here
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  Speaker 3: in downtown Beijing. We've got cars, we've got trucks, we've
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  Speaker 3: got buses, but very difficult to hear the noise of
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  Speaker 3: this traffic if you walk through the streets, very easy
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  Speaker 3: to have a conversation. You can't hear much beeping and
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  Speaker 3: other sounds behind me. In fact, the only real sound
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  Speaker 3: you're going to hear is the sound of the tires
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  Speaker 3: moving across the gravel of the road. And that's in
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  Speaker 3: large measure because the people in China, and particularly in Beijing,
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  Speaker 3: have been upgrading their vehicles from traditional petrol powered cars
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  Speaker 3: two electric vehicles. Government subsidies have largely been at play,
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  Speaker 3: and they've been very popular.
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  Speaker 1: Yorni Vashan is The Australian's New North Asia correspondent. He's
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  Speaker 1: moved from Sydney, a pretty noisy city, to Beijing, a
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  Speaker 1: city that you would think would be very loud. JOHNI,
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  Speaker 1: what was your first impression when you got to Beijing
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  Speaker 1: of the sound of the traffic.
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  Speaker 3: Well, I was astonished. It was just so quiet. I'd
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  Speaker 3: be walking around the streets of Beijing, and I was
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  Speaker 3: trying to acclimatize myself with this new environment. And what
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  Speaker 3: I was expecting when I came here was first of all,
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  Speaker 3: a lot of pollution, which there is, but it's not
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  Speaker 3: on the scale that I expected at all. I mean,
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  Speaker 3: in fact, most days you wake up in the air
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  Speaker 3: is perfectly fine and clean, and you should go outside
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  Speaker 3: and everything's great. And the other thing I was expecting
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  Speaker 3: was just this in this cacophony coming from the traffic.
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  Speaker 3: Because I know that Bejing is a very, very big
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  Speaker 3: city which has a population roughly the size of Australias,
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  Speaker 3: except it's condensed in the city. And I know there
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  Speaker 3: are a lot of cars here, and I know there
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  Speaker 3: are very big highways. But what I noticed was that
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  Speaker 3: you would walk along a nine, ten eleven lane highway
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  Speaker 3: full of people, full of cars, full of buses and motorbikes,
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  Speaker 3: but you can't really hear them. What you can hear
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  Speaker 3: is everyone else. You can hear the birds, you can hear, unfortunately,
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  Speaker 3: the sound of people expectorating, but you can't hear the raw,
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  Speaker 3: that deafening roar that you get from line after line
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  Speaker 3: of car just in front of you and going at speed.
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  Speaker 3: And the particularly startling thing is that when these engines
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  Speaker 3: are idle, you can't hear them at all because they're
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: all evs.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think we've all had that experience of nearly
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: being run over by an EV that we didn't hear coming.
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  Speaker 2: It's only the crackling of the.
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  Speaker 1: Leaves or the the rubber on the road that makes
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  Speaker 1: you know that it's coming. When that is multiplied across
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  Speaker 1: an entire city of twenty five million people, it's a
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  Speaker 1: remarkable transformation in a pretty short time though, right.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, And so you and I had a conversation about this.
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  Speaker 3: I happened to mention it to you, and you were
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  Speaker 3: very encouraging about perhaps exploring this as a potential news item,
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  Speaker 3: which is what we've done today. And one of the
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  Speaker 3: things I learned very quickly is that this wasn't just
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  Speaker 3: something that happened by accident. This was very much by
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  Speaker 3: design here in China. So about four or five years ago,
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  Speaker 3: basically amid the pandemic, and in the years that followed,
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  Speaker 3: this enormous construction boom that happened across China between the
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  Speaker 3: Beijing Olympics and around twenty sixteen, noise complaints have begun
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  Speaker 3: one of the highest issues of environmental grievance in the country.
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  Speaker 3: It probably didn't outrank concerns about air and water quality,
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  Speaker 3: but it was right up there as a major concern
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  Speaker 3: of residents. In fact, in twenty twenty one, the government
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  Speaker 3: here said that around for complaints have been made just
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  Speaker 3: about noise, and that was all kinds of noise, but
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  Speaker 3: social activities, construction, industrial machinery, and of course traffic were
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  Speaker 3: among them. And so what the Chinese authorities did at
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  Speaker 3: the very highest level was make this a massive political
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  Speaker 3: priority for them. They made noise pollution one of the
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  Speaker 3: essential agenda items in their five year plan, and they
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  Speaker 3: basically said, by twenty twenty five, we're going to increase
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  Speaker 3: compliance with noise restrictions to eighty five percent across the country,
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  Speaker 3: and of course within one or two years they met that,
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  Speaker 3: and the compliance rate is sort of above eighty five percent,
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  Speaker 3: which was the target they set. But they did it
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  Speaker 3: by employing different policy levers to a get people to
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  Speaker 3: take up evs and b regulate the amount of traffic
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  Speaker 3: that's on the highways in Beijing. In Shanghai, in Guangzhou,
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  Speaker 3: in all the big cities, and some of the cities
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  Speaker 3: have different rules around who can drive and when they
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  Speaker 3: can drive and all that sort of stuff. But it
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  Speaker 3: was essentially a combination of policy incentives to get Pea
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  Speaker 3: people to dump their petrol powered cars and take up evs,
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  Speaker 3: and it was also design planning and traffic measures that
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  Speaker 3: just saw fewer people actually on the roads.
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  Speaker 1: It's so interesting in this command economy, you're not really
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  Speaker 1: surprised that there's a high compliance rate.
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  Speaker 2: With the government directive. But what is surprising is that
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  Speaker 2: they listened to.
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  Speaker 1: People that they cared that Beijing has found the noise
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  Speaker 1: overwhelming because the noise comes from the Chinese Communist Party's
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  Speaker 1: big goal, which is industrialization, raising living standards, making China
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  Speaker 1: the most powerful economy in the world. What do you
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  Speaker 1: think about the fact that they listened and they maybe
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  Speaker 1: took some sort of backward steps on productivity to get
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  Speaker 1: that noise down.
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  Speaker 3: Well, there's two things I'd say about that. The first
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  Speaker 3: is we've all watched the rising Chinese middle class and
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  Speaker 3: the emergence of that over the recent decades. Now, what
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  Speaker 3: came with that rising middle class was a society that
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  Speaker 3: expected higher levels of living standards and quality of life.
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  Speaker 3: That's what's led to these complaints. And what the government
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  Speaker 3: here appears to have noticed is that with these millions
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  Speaker 3: of complaints, this deluge of complaints about noise, what they
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  Speaker 3: had was not a minor nuisance that they needed to
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  Speaker 3: handle or something they could just brush aside as not
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  Speaker 3: particularly important. No, no, no, this was essentially this was becoming
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  Speaker 3: a political problem because it was contributing to discord in
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  Speaker 3: the social harmony, in the quality of life, and it
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  Speaker 3: was probably going to become a political issue and a
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  Speaker 3: potential pressure point. So they had to act on it.
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  Speaker 3: And when they did, they decided to act on it
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  Speaker 3: so comprehensively. So essentially, sixteen government departments came together at
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  Speaker 3: the highest levels and set orders for all the municipalities
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  Speaker 3: to reach certain targets and restrictions, and that meant banning
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  Speaker 3: certain products from coming into the country, setting limits on
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  Speaker 3: how much noise could be made, what the traffic should
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  Speaker 3: look like, who could drive on the roads, and other measures.
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  Speaker 3: They've just brought down the den across this society, and
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  Speaker 3: that now makes walking around a place like Beijing a
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  Speaker 3: very pleasant experience.
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  Speaker 1: The other thing that seems to be absent is the honking.
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  Speaker 1: And I think we've all had that experience of arriving
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  Speaker 1: in an Asian city, whether it's Hanoi or Bankok or whatever,
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  Speaker 1: realizing that the way we use our horns in Australia,
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  Speaker 1: which is an expression of anger or ridicule or rage,
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  Speaker 1: is different to them that they're kind of, you know,
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  Speaker 1: Hong Kong Kong, here I come, or Hong Kong, I
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  Speaker 1: see you will, Hong Kong merge. Now, why are Beijing
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  Speaker 1: is not honking.
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  Speaker 3: Because they're not supposed to. There are no honking zones
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  Speaker 3: in these cities, not just in Beijing but elsewhere as well.
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  Speaker 3: You're not supposed to honk. Honking is not an expression
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  Speaker 3: of yourself or an expression of your emotion over here.
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  Speaker 3: You're just not supposed to do it. So that's why
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  Speaker 3: you're not hearing honking. In fact, the one thing I noticed,
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  Speaker 3: and I don't want to over exaggerate the situation, like
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  Speaker 3: when you're walking along a nine lane highway, you can
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  Speaker 3: hear the sound of the cars, but what you're hearing
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  Speaker 3: is a some of the petrol powered cars, which certainly
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  Speaker 3: still exists, especially in Beijing, not everyone is driving an
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  Speaker 3: EV but in large measure they are. But what I
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  Speaker 3: seem to be hearing most is just the sound of
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  Speaker 3: the tires on these roadways. And even in that respect,
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  Speaker 3: the authorities have been acting in a very comprehensive fashion.
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  Speaker 3: They laid something like three hundred million square meters of
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  Speaker 3: reduced noise surface along the roads just to make the
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  Speaker 3: sound of the tires a bit quieter. So we have
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  Speaker 3: this incredible assault on noise that was enacted at the
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  Speaker 3: highest levels. And again it seems to have drawn its
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  Speaker 3: genesis from sheer people power, which is not something I
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  Speaker 3: expected to see in a country like this.
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  Speaker 2: Coming up, So where's all Beijing's other pollution? Ending up?
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  Speaker 1: You mentioned air pollution, and behind you in Beijing, I
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  Speaker 1: can see a bit of beautiful blue sky, which is
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  Speaker 1: kind of surprising since you've been in Beijing. I added
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  Speaker 1: the weather app for Beijing to my phone just to
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  Speaker 1: check out how it was for you every day, and
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  Speaker 1: alarmed by the particulate pollution measure that they show every day.
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  Speaker 2: There's a lot of stuff you're breathing in that can't
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  Speaker 2: be that good.
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  Speaker 1: But all these evs need to be charged up, and
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  Speaker 1: in China, that means col fired power stations.
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  Speaker 2: We know that China is building coal firedepower at a
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  Speaker 2: huge rate. They're massive customers for coal. They dig up
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  Speaker 2: a lot of it of their own. So will the rise.
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  Speaker 1: Of evs actually reduce air pollution in China or is
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  Speaker 1: this has it just been exported to the countryside.
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  Speaker 3: I would suggest it's probably been exported to the countryside.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, who knows where we go from here in
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  Speaker 3: terms of how they power the network and how you
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  Speaker 3: plug in your EV to get your eight dollars worth
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  Speaker 3: of charge to then drive your DD or your uber
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  Speaker 3: around the city all day. But for now, the air
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  Speaker 3: quality here appears to have improved out of side. I
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  Speaker 3: haven't had a day in Beijing, and I've only been
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  Speaker 3: here for two weeks, but there hasn't been a day
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  Speaker 3: in Beijing where I've actually thought to myself it's not
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  Speaker 3: a good day to go outside. I mean, the air
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  Speaker 3: quality has always been excellent or at worst good. At
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  Speaker 3: a level of good, you're still advised to go outside.
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  Speaker 3: But some people who have chronic illnesses might want to
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  Speaker 3: wear a mask or some other measure. But generally speaking,
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  Speaker 3: you would expect that this pollution is going somewhere. I mean,
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  Speaker 3: one thing I would say to you, Claire, is that
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  Speaker 3: this is certainly a country, and it's certainly a leadership
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  Speaker 3: that's very much got its eyes on reducing its climate footprint.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, yes, there is a strong desire for coal
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: and for generation, for keeping the society moving. I mean,
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  Speaker 3: one thing that I'm constantly told by the experts in
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: academics that I'm meeting over here is that one of
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: the core features of Chinese society is survival, not just liberty.
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  Speaker 3: So for us in the West, we're very concerned with liberty,
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  Speaker 3: but over here liberty is very important, but actually survival
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: is even more important. So, yes, there is a reliance
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  Speaker 3: on coal from now, but this is very much a
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  Speaker 3: leadership that's looking towards a climate future. And I mean
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  Speaker 3: you don't need to go very far to realize that
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  Speaker 3: they're investing a great amount of energy and attention and
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: money into wind, solar batteries and hydro. And the other
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  Speaker 3: observation I'd make again from my very short amount of
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  Speaker 3: time here, is that this is a government that when
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: it wants something to get done, it can do it
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: at break next speed. It's done it in the past
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: and It's going to be very exciting to see where
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: it goes from here in the future.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Jonni Bishan is The Australian's North Asia correspondent. Thanks Joanni,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Jonnibishan's story is live right now at the
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Australian dot com dot au plus. You can watch the
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: video of this episode at our YouTube channel.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: There's a link in the show notes.