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Smog in China has become a threat to national security because surveillance cameras guarding sensitive sites can’t film through the thick haze, experts claim.
The smog that blankets the country for much of the year is getting worse and now the central government fears terrorists may choose a smoggy day to launch attacks.
Concerns were voiced as it was reported that an eight-year-old girl had become the youngest person in China to contract lung cancer which doctors claim was caused by the country's horrendous air pollution.
Referring to the effect on CCTV cameras, Kong Zilong, a senior project engineer and an expert in video surveillance technology, said: 'As the visibility drops below three metres, even the best camera cannot see beyond a dozen metres.'
The security fears come just days after suicide bombers protesting against oppression in the western Muslim province of Xinjiang drove a car into a crowd of tourists in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square - the site of the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy protesters by government troops and tanks.
The car exploded into a fireball, killing the three occupants and two tourists and injuring 40. Five people have been arrested in connection with the attack.
According to government advisers, existing technology, such as infrared imaging, can help cameras see through fog or smoke at a certain level, but the smog on the mainland has reached apocalyptic proportion.
Professor Yang Aiping, an expert in digital imaging, said she was facing tremendous pressure because of the enormous technological challenges.
It comes as China's top negotiator at international climate talks said on Tuesday that air pollution in his own country - the world's biggest carbon emitter - is harming its citizens.
'China indeed is suffering from severe air pollution,' said Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, the top economic planning body.
Smoggy conditions have 'now become the norm which has severely affected the mental and physical health of the Chinese people', he added - but voiced hope for improvement in the next decade.
Xie, speaking to reporters before global climate talks in Poland next week, attributed China's air problems to the country's 'obsolete development model', its 'unreasonable industrial and energy structure" and discharge of pollutants by some companies 'in a very extensive way'.
The root cause, he added, is the 'use of fossil fuels'.
Pollution is becoming a major source of public anger in China and authorities vowed in September to reduce levels of atmospheric pollutants in Beijing and other major cities by as much as 25 per cent by 2017 to try to improve their dire air quality.
The government said pollution levels would be cut by slowing the growth of coal consumption so that its share of China's energy sources fell to 65 percent by 2017.
Last month, choking smog forced Chinese authorities to shut down one of the country's largest cities.
The dense pollution in Harbin - a city of more than 10 million people – meant that visibility was reduced to less than 10 metres.
The smog forced schools to suspend classes, caused snarling traffic and closed the airport, in what was the country's first major air pollution crisis of the winter.
The cold weather typically brings the worst air pollution to northern China because of a combination of weather conditions and an increase in the burning of coal for homes and municipal heating systems.
China is the world's biggest coal consumer and is forecast to account for more than half of global demand next year.
The particles are so dense, they block light almost as effectively as a brick wall but ‘the security devices that could function in heavy smog had yet to be invented’ Mr Kong said.
Like Britain, Beijing has invested heavily to build up a nationwide surveillance network that lets police watch every major street and corner in main cities.
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