On Saturday, state news agency Xinhua reported that 79 Chinese cities have triggered the country's air pollution alerts as winter smog covers the entire country.
According to the data gathered, as of November 30, five cities had issued red pollution warnings, the most severe in China's pollution warning system, 73 had issued orange warnings, the second-most severe, and one city had issued a yellow warning, triggering the implementation of the country's emergency management and control measures.
A majority of the cities included in the data are located at the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, which includes Beijing, Jiangsu and Shaanxi.
Beijing issued its first air pollution alert for the winter season on Nov. 23, and Jiangu province issued orange smog alerts in late November, forcing factories and utilities to slash output.
Northern China often sees heavy smog over the winter, which runs from mid-November to mid-March, as homes and power utilities burn more coal for power and heating.
On Saturday evening, the concentration of small particulate matter at Beijing's Temple of Heaven was 193 micrograms per cubic meter, according to data from China's National Environmental Monitoring Centre, five-and-a-half times the state standard of 35 micrograms per cubic meter.
