China’s PM2.5 Reforms and India’s Regulatory Lessons

China and India both faced severe particulate pollution, but while China cut annual PM2.5 by more than 50 percent between 2013 and 2024, Delhi remains among the world’s worst-polluted cities due to fragmented governance and weak enforcement; Beijing implemented a multilayered strategy through the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan and the Blue Sky Protection Campaign that coordinated action across regions, shut coal-fired boilers, enforced fuel-quality standards, relocated polluting clusters, and prosecuted non-compliance. China also created a centralised regulatory system called the Environmental Vertical Reform that empowered provincial environmental bureaus with authority over counties, reducing the overlap between governments and ensuring a unified response. India, by contrast, has the Air Act 1981, Environment Protection Act 1986, CAQM, PUC norms and GRAP, but enforcement is fragmented across local bodies, tribunals and pollution boards, slowing action and diffusing accountability, and even Delhi’s industrial relocation plans and waste-management strategies failed due to infrastructure bottlenecks. India can draw on principles that made Beijing’s turnaround possible rather than copying China’s political system: long-term mission mode interventions, local-level incentives for compliance, strong inspection and penalty systems, investment in clean energy, expansion of public transport and crop-residue solutions, and robust vehicle-scrappage and fuel-quality reforms.