I wake up and still groggy, check my weather app. It’s not the temperature that causes me to gasp, but the AQI (air quality index). It’s at 13, the kind of reading you might (if lucky) expect in the European countryside. But I am in Beijing. When I last lived here, between 2002-2009, pollution monitors were, on occasion, unable to even record the AQI, it was so high (think 700s and beyond).Returning to China after 16 years away is like a fever dream – there is much that is familiar, but bent into off-kilter shapes, and much that would simply have been unimaginable then. I feel a child’s sense of wonder as I walk around, trying to process the old-new contours of my once-upon-a home.Nothing is a greater surprise than Beijing’s skyline. I am not referring to the futuristic urbanscape of the Central Business District with its architectural glitz. Shiny skyscrapers in gravity-defying shapes were already in the making a decade and a half ago. My wonderment is at what lies beyond the city skyline – cerulean punctuated by the sweep of rolling hills.The Western Hills flank one end of the capital city and are less than 20 kilometers from the center. Yet, they had been entirely invisible through the thick, almost corporeal, air in the not-so-distant past, when Beijing ranked amongst the most polluted cities in the world.For people suffering the smog of Indian cities, China’s clean air – the Beijing AQI has been about 50 on average over the last month- evoke a reaction equivalent to what its six-lane highways used to engender: shock and awe. What magic wand did Beijing wave to accomplish it?In 2017, when it was not yet evident to a global audience just how much cleaner Chinese skies were getting, I published a book, Choked: Everything You Were Afraid to Know About Pollution,’ in which I argued that for Indian cities, China was the model to follow on cleaning the skies.I outlined how China’s experience with industrialisation and fighting pollution demonstrated how blue skies entailed a tough, long slog that required, among other elements, government capacity, civil society activism, commercial compliance and bureaucratic incentives. There were no magic bullets. But neither was air pollution a fait accompli. It is a man-made problem, with man-made solutions.The clear blue skyline in China. Photo: Pallavi AiyarMeasure to fight pollution take years to pay off. China had in fact been battling bad air for decades before cleaner skies became tangible. By the 2008 Olympic Games, pollution abatement equipment had been mandated and installed on the vast majority of its thermal power plants. This was technology that removed up to 95 percent of Sulphur Dioxide emissions. Nitrogen oxide-removing tech was next to become widely installed.Through a combination of closing or upgrading coal-fired brick kilns and other polluting industries, enforcing strict vehicular emissions standards, transitioning to cleaner energy sources like natural gas and renewables, and promoting electric vehicles (EVs), Beijing’s air was gradually, not suddenly, cleaned.In 2014, China updated its environmental protection law to give local authorities the power to detain company bosses who failed to complete environmental impact assessments. The law also removed limits on the fines that firms could be subject to for breaching pollution quotas.Finally, China also learned quickly enough that to tackle bad air required coordination between cities within an air shed – the region within which air circulates. The wind does not obey city boundaries, an inconvenient fact that necessitates joint action across entire regions. Beijing’s measures to clean the skies came to nought, until it began to work in conjunction with neighbouring Tianjin and Hebei to coordinate policies to address all major sources of pollution – industrial, vehicular and domestic.Today, China is as a leading producer of pollution-abatement equipment, electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines. The country’s power consumption in the single month of July this year, a record-breaking 1.02 trillion kWh, exceeded that of Japan’s annual equivalent. It marked the first time any country’s monthly power usage surpassed this threshold and was an 8.6 percent increase compared to July 2024.Staggering statistics, but given China’s size, superlatives are par for the course. What truly blew my mind was that wind, solar, and biomass power generation accounted for nearly a quarter of this. In fact, over the first six months of 2025, renewable energy sources met not just all new electricity demand, but exceeded it – meaning wind and solar generation growth surpassed total electricity consumption growth. It’s a true milestone, with renewables displacing existing fossil fuel generation rather than simply meeting incremental demand. China’s CO2 emissions are beginning to decline.As we drove into the city from the airport when we landed last month, the number of cars with the green license plates that mark them out as electric vehicle, was overwhelming. In China, electric and hybrid cars accounted for about 51% of new car sales in July 2025, marking a tipping point where they represent the majority of the market. Recent trends indicate that electric car penetration in major cities like Beijing exceeds 60-70% for new registrations, fueled by air quality mandates and incentives.Last weekend, I spent a night with my family at a boutique hotel by the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall of China. The hotel, Brickyard Retreat, was formerly a tile factory with nine chimneys that belched out smoke at the height of production. It was shuttered as part of the drive to cut down on pollution, before being reborn in 2010, as a charming example of industrial chic. The hotel features exposed brick and is dotted with artifacts made from the kind of colourful glazed tiles it used to produce.This new lease on life is symbolic of the broader fortunes of Beigou, the village it is located in. From a garbage-strewn, smoggy backwater, Beigou is now a magnet for city slickers in search of bucolic downtime.Unexpectedly, the front office manager of the hotel was an Indian. We chatted for a while, and he told me his story. Nitin Ganesh Chand Kala was born in Nausari, Gujarat. He studied hospitality at a college in Mumbai but was curious about what the wider world could offer him. In 2017, a former professor helped him to secure a job as a restaurant manager at an Indian restaurant in Beijing where he worked for several years. Once the COVID pandemic hit, he used the downtime to learn Chinese. This proved to be a skill that made him valuable to hotels that required someone who could communicate with both local and foreign guests. He said that he plans to stay in the country for as long as he can.“I love India and I miss the food, but the thinking here is more mature. People understand how to behave. Look at the roads here,” he said pointing into the horizon. “The village roads are better than the ones in Mumbai.”Later, while walking about the village, we met the owner of a local homestay, who moonlights as a DiDi – the Chinese equivalent of Uber- driver. He offered to take us back to the city the following day. When he drove up to the hotel to pick us up, it was in a spanking new electric Nissan.He said he’d bought it a month ago for 300,000 RMB (around 40,000 USD). “Not bad, right? Not bad for a ‘laobaixing,’” he chuckled using a term that refers to an ordinary person, a peasant, a commoner. Not bad at all, I thought.