Talking about air quality in China is a mess because it depends so much on which time of the year and where in the country you are. Across the board you’ll find an improving trend, but air quality still tends to be bad in the winter months and generally worse in northern, inland cities. Tokyo is way ahead here, even Seoul is better despite it being an industrious, car-infested metropolis in spite of all the trains there, so “best air quality in East Asia” is definitely not true.
I got these graphs from https://waqi.info/, up top you see air quality for 2026, and below the data for previous years.
Hangzhou is a wealthy, coastal city and over ten years bad air quality has gone from two-thirds of the year to one-third (approximately); in summer most of the days are green but in winter there’s still bad air quality on many days.
Xi’an is located inland, nestled in a valley surrounded by mountains and close to the Gobi Desert and coal mines to the north. With colder winters, these months of the year are worse than in Hangzhou but in summer they’re not far off.
Tokyo has had environmental initiatives since the 1970s (look up the “Garbage War”) and has a mature and VERY extensive rail network, and urban expressways that have fewer lanes and lower speeds. Fun fact, the city with the worst traffic in Japan is Naha on Okinawa, despite a population of only 300,000 (the US made it car-dependent during their occupation of Okinawa until 1972)
Because of influence by the US and car-making chaebols, Seoul was built to be very car-dependent. Its vast rail network has been a very recent development, but it’s showing in the improving air quality when it used to have a similar reputation to Chinese cities, which sometimes gets blamed on pollution literally blowing over from China.
Interesting that Xi’an is still so poor, it really didn’t seem that bad when I visited (although it’s also just a really fascinating place so perhaps I was distracted… I swear I spent 6 or 7 hours at the Terracotta warriors)
But thanks for doing the homework! It’s super impressive how far they’ve come! (which seems to be the story of china generally)
Xi’an is a provincial capital and an international tourism destination, it’s actually a little above average for China. The country also increasingly uses wealth from the coast to invest in uplifting the inland regions, which levels out some of the discrepancy.
Neighbouring Gansu province is the poorest province in China, four times poorer than Xi’an. Here’s a video I found of a Brit exploring its capital city Lanzhou in early spring: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ex-puh3W70
Talking about air quality in China is a mess because it depends so much on which time of the year and where in the country you are. Across the board you’ll find an improving trend, but air quality still tends to be bad in the winter months and generally worse in northern, inland cities. Tokyo is way ahead here, even Seoul is better despite it being an industrious, car-infested metropolis in spite of all the trains there, so “best air quality in East Asia” is definitely not true.
I got these graphs from https://waqi.info/, up top you see air quality for 2026, and below the data for previous years.
Interesting that Xi’an is still so poor, it really didn’t seem that bad when I visited (although it’s also just a really fascinating place so perhaps I was distracted… I swear I spent 6 or 7 hours at the Terracotta warriors)
But thanks for doing the homework! It’s super impressive how far they’ve come! (which seems to be the story of china generally)
Xi’an is a provincial capital and an international tourism destination, it’s actually a little above average for China. The country also increasingly uses wealth from the coast to invest in uplifting the inland regions, which levels out some of the discrepancy.
Neighbouring Gansu province is the poorest province in China, four times poorer than Xi’an. Here’s a video I found of a Brit exploring its capital city Lanzhou in early spring: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ex-puh3W70
Cheers again but I was talking about the air quality in Xi’an - I remember it being okay but I presumably got lucky:)
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: