According to the Ministry of Finance, China has put aside five billion Yuan or 817 million US dollars to tackle air pollution in six regions including Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong, and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

The fund will be distributed as awards, depending on how the cities and provinces achieve pollution reduction targets, their investment in pollution treatment and the reductions in levels of PM2.5.

A large chunk of the funds are targeted to go to Hebei Province, which suffers from the worst air pollution in the country.

Monitoring by environmental authorities shows that in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, only 34 percent of August days met the country’s air quality standard.