Third, banning things probably works better in China than it would in most places. Many of the biggest polluters are state-owned enterprises, so the state can more easily control them. An authoritarian government is also able to issue draconian orders—sometimes far too drastic, as the shivering children of Hebei can testify. The efforts of Xi Jinping, the president, to make local leaders obey the dictates of the central government seem to have turned the former passive resistance at the lower levels of the bureaucracy into overenthusiastic compliance.

　　China has two other advantages. More than half its pollution comes from coal-fired power stations, which means that by concentrating on coal, the government can do more than in India, say, where the burning of stubble after harvest and other sorts of pollution are big problems. Unlike most developing countries, China has invested a lot in monitoring and measuring, too.

　　Last, command-and-control suits a country that does not need to justify the costs. The Clean Air Alliance of China estimated in 2015 that the investment cost of the national action plan in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei provinces alone would be 250bn yuan (bn). That does not include the opportunity cost of suspending construction projects for months on end or shutting down some smelters.

　　But big environmental controls of every kind are expensive. Germany’s Energiewende, for example, which uses subsidies to encourage greener fuels, cost €60bn (bn) in 2015 and German carbon emissions have not fallen since 2010. At least in China airborne pollutants fell for five years and the benefits in terms of deaths avoided were real. Now the government needs to show that these gains can continue for more than a few years—without leaving children freezing outside.

　　【(公眾號：GDUTCEO)】

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