Believe it or not, the air quality in the Chinese capital is actually improving. Just not very fast. On Monday, the Beijing municipal government issued its first “red alert” for smog, urging schools to close, restricting traffic and closing down construction sites for three days starting Tuesday. The decision underlines what everybody knows: decades of unbridled economic growth, corruption and utter disregard for environmental safety have combined to produce some of the deadliest air in planetary history. Read: Air pollution in China is killing 1.6 million people a year. But what is perhaps less well known is that the capital’s air is heading for what could be its best year in more than a decade. And perhaps, […]