International air monitoring body Clean Air Asia, or CAA, recently released the list of the top 100 cities in China with blue skies in 2021 and among 168 key cities that were assessed, Jinhua – located in East China's Zhejiang province – ranked 9th overall, as well as ranking 2nd in the province.
Founded in 2001, the CAA is a non-profit organization that has published the list for three consecutive years. Headquartered in Manila, capital of the Philippines, it is a UN-recognized partnership of more than 250 organizations in 31 countries in Asia and worldwide and eight country networks – China, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam – and is supervised by a partnership council.
As opposed to standard air quality city rankings, its list evaluates a city's three-year moving average of air quality improvement and policy measures, with the aim of encouraging cities to step up their efforts to continuously improve air quality.
Since the city carried out its Blue Sky Protection Campaign in 2018, more than 130,000 old cars have been scrapped in Jinhua, while more than 22,000 new energy vehicles were added.
Over 7,000 coal-fired boilers, gas generators and industrial furnaces have also been eliminated. The initiative cleaned up and rectified more than 2,300 businesses that were discharging polluted gas.
