China's broad campaign to build more coal-fired power plants is reversing years of improvements in controlling pollution and is fouling the air of the nation's neighbors, writes The Far Economic Review. The increase in power-plant construction has come in response to what is being treated as a national emergency: a persistent shortage of electricity. But the government's vigorous response to those shortfalls is producing other problems. Since most of China's power plants, old and new, are fuelled by coal, their smokestacks are sending ever more coal dust and sulfur dioxide into the air.
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