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Unequal air-quality improvement in China

Nature Cities volume 2, pages 1117–1118 (2025)Cite this article

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China’s progress in the improvement of air quality masks a widening gap: its heavily polluted, industrial border cities bear a disproportionate health and economic burden, which demands urgent policy shifts to avoid deepening environmental injustice.

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Fig. 1: Health effects of PM2.5 concentrations.

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Acknowledgements

The authors were supported by Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province No. ZR2023QB037 and No. ZR2022QB144.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Heze Branch, Biological Engineering Technology Innovation Center of Shandong Province, Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Heze, China

    Xianmang Xu  (徐先莽), Peiyu Zhao  (赵培玉) & Jin Wang  (王金)

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  1. Xianmang Xu  (徐先莽)
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  2. Peiyu Zhao  (赵培玉)
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  3. Jin Wang  (王金)
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xianmang Xu  (徐先莽).

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Nature Cities thanks Lutz Sager, Xinming Du and M. Omar Nawaz for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Xu, X., Zhao, P. & Wang, J. Unequal air-quality improvement in China. Nat Cities 2, 1117–1118 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-025-00357-0

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