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You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
Beijing residents lost as much as 8,000 yuan on average to traffic jams last year, the highest in the country.
A report has been issued by Didi Kuaidi, China's largest ride-hailing application and its partners. The report reveals that Beijing residents on average spent 52 minutes travelling 19 kilometers daily between home and work.
White-collar workers in China's mega cities including Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Shanghai, were those who lost most money to traffic congestion.
The cost ranged between 6,000 and 8,000 yuan per person in the four cities whose residents are among the best paid employees in China.
The research was based on data collected on Didi Kuaidi's online platform. It shows that not only those in mega cities suffered from poor traffic conditions.
Residents in second-tier cities spent 37 minutes on average between home and work, with a travelling speed of 23 kilometers per hour due to traffic jams. The speed was even slower than first-tier cities' 24 kilometers per hour.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
Air quality in major Chinese cities in north and east China dropped significantly in the last few months due to winter heating and adverse weather.
The Ministry of Environmental Protection issued air quality figures for 74 major Chinese cities in December. It found that in the three key areas of the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and the combined Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei region, only the Pearl River Delta in southern China saw better air quality.
Air quality in the other two regions worsened, and PM2.5, which is a major pollutant, increased significantly compared to the same period of 2014.
The ministry says the drop was caused by heating in winter and adverse weather, which led to five rounds of poor air quality in north China.
The PM2.5 indexes of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei Province climbed in December compared to the previous year. Beijing's PM2.5 index increased almost 170 percent.
The air quality of seven major cities in south China, including Kunming in Yunan Province, Haikou in Hainan Province and Shenzhen in Guangdong, were the best in China and passed air quality standards on every day of December.
The top 10 cities for worst air quality in December were 7 cities in Hebei Province, plus Jinan in Shandong Province, Zhengzhou in Henan, and Harbin in northeast China.
