China's environmental quality continued to improve in 2025. This is according to data released by China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment at a press conference on Wednesday. The positive development applies to both air and surface water across the country.
In the air domain, the average concentration of fine particulate matter PM2.5 in 339 cities at the prefecture level and above reached 28.0 micrograms per cubic meter, a year-on-year decrease of 4.4 percent. For PM10, the average was 48 micrograms per cubic meter, down 2.0 percent from the previous year.
The proportion of days with good air quality reached 89.3 percent nationally, after subtracting days with extreme fluctuations caused by sandstorms. Compared to 2024, this is an improvement of 1.9 percentage points. Days with heavy or severe pollution remained at 0.9 percent and unchanged year-over-year.
Improvements also continued in surface water. Of the 3,641 sites monitored, 91.4 per cent showed good water quality, an increase of 1.0 percentage point year-on-year. For 209 key lakes and reservoirs, 78.5 percent of sites met good quality standards, up 1.4 percentage points from the previous year.
The published data confirms that systematic environmental measures are delivering measurable results in China and the trend of gradual environmental improvement continues beyond 2025.
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