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Cleaning up China’s air pollution will cost 1.75 trillion yuan (£176b) between 2013 and 2017, a high-ranking environmental official has estimated. Wang Jinnan, deputy head of the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning, said that the investment –part of an anti-pollution "action plan" announced by China's cabinet in September – “would drive up GDP by nearly two trillion yuan (£202b) and create over two million jobs,” China’s official newswire Xinhua reported. The total cost will be higher than the 2017 gross domestic products of most countries, including Finland, Israel and Portugal. “36.7 percent of the investment, or 640 billion yuan (£64.5b) should go on cleaning up industry, followed by 490 billion yuan (28.2 percent) on cleaner energy sources. Cleaning up motor vehicles will absorb 210 billion yuan,” Xinhua reported, citing Wang. In 2013, broad swaths of China recorded their highest air pollution levels in 52 years, causing widespread outrage over the massive environmental toll wrought by decades of unchecked economic growth. While Beijing has long been notorious for its pea-soup air, a number of traditionally clearer cities, including Shanghai and the northeastern metropolis Harbin, have registered pollution levels high enough for local authorities to ground flights, close schools and pull cars from the roads. On Friday, Shanghai’s concentration of airborne PM 2.5 – particulate matter small enough to lodge deep within the lungs – rose to 214 micrograms per cubic meter, three times China’s national limit. The official Shanghai Environmental Monitoring Center warned children and the elderly to stay indoors. | 
