A man exercises in the morning as he faces chimneys emitting smoke behind buildings across the Songhua River in Jilin. Reuters When it comes to China’s bad air problem, Beijing usually gets all the attention. But it has plenty of company. Only three of the 74 cities monitored by China’s own environmental authorities measured up in terms of air quality last year. According to Wu Xiaoqing, a deputy minister at the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the 74 cities were measured against newly introduced air quality standards for particulate matters and gases. The five worst offenders were all in the northern province of Hebei, which surrounds Beijing. Xingtai led the list followed by Shijiazhuang, Handan, Tangshan and Baoding. Hengshui and Langfang, also in Hebei, were in the top ten. But the problem was far more widespread. Xian, Zhengzhou and Jinan were among the worst. Other cities in the monitoring sample […]