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You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing.
The skies between China and the United States are getting busier.
Last year, 75 weekly nonstop flights were added between the two countries, up more than 30 percent from 2014. More are on the way.
Six of the eight airlines that provide direct US-China services opened new routes last year, adding to their fast-growing schedules. Some even expanded service to China's second-tier cities.
During the past peak season, there were 320 weekly flights.
The four largest Chinese airlines, namely, Air China, China Eastern, China Southern and Hainan Airlines, expanded in the U.S. market significantly last year.
China's flagship carrier Air China leads the "Big Four" with 55 weekly flights from Beijing to seven U.S. cities, including a new route from Beijing to Newark in New Jersey, in October. The airline company also increased the frequency of the Beijing-Los Angeles route to 21 flights a week.
Hainan Airlines opened three new routes, namely, Shanghai to Boston, Shanghai to Seattle, and Beijing to San Jose in California, becoming the first airline to fly nonstop from China to the heart of Silicon Valley.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
The national environmental watchdog says boosting efforts to control air pollution in northern China, especially winter smog from the burning of coal, is a mission for this year.
Among the efforts, Beijing has announced that it will wipe out coal use in most rural areas by 2020.
Beijing's Environmental Protection Bureau says as much as 60 percent of smog content is caused by coal burning in the starting phase of each smog.
To start with, Beijing will replace coal-fired heating stoves with those powered by electricity or gas in 400 villages this year. The city will then carry out the campaign to the districts of Chaoyang, Haidian, Fengtai and Shijingshan by 2017.
Beijing's downtown districts of Dongcheng and Xicheng eliminated coal burning last year.
Beijing and other places in northern China experienced several smog alerts in the past two months, when peak readings were many times higher than the national safety level. Burning coal for winter heating has been blamed as one of the primary causes of air pollution.
Environmental authorities have vowed to prevent the issue of environmental protection from becoming a stumbling block in the country's drive to fulfill its goals set out in the next Five-Year Plan which starts this year.
