Today China removed “Under the Dome” an anti-smog video that is described as equivalent to Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth.” (view it here) In fact the parallel runs deeper than you might think. As explained here China’s pledge to limit carbon emissions by 2030, which will be its pledge under the Paris Climate Agreement, is actually nothing more than a domestic anti-smog policy.
The video was posted online on 28 Feb 2015, just before the meetings of the National People’s Congress, without interference from censors. It was viewed more than 150 million times on Tencent within three days of its release. China’s environmental protection minister, Chen Jining, praised the film as “worthy of admiration” and compared it with Rachel Carson’s book of 1962, Silent Spring. People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, reposted the film and published an interview with Chai, the producer and narrator.