In 2023, North China's Shanxi province achieved good results in the continuous improvement of its natural environment by promoting carbon reduction, pollution reduction, green expansion, and economic growth simultaneously, taking solid steps towards the construction of a beautiful Shanxi.

The air quality index (AQI) in the province last year was 4.48, a year-on-year decrease of 0.2 percent. After excluding abnormal dust days, the proportion of good-air-quality days was 76 percent, with the proportion of heavily polluted days accounting for 0.9 percent, which has been kept under 1 percent for the past three years.

The proportion of high-quality surface water bodies in the province reached a record high of 93.6 percent last year, exceeding the national average level of 89.4 percent. Furthermore, a total of 255 groundwater quality monitoring wells were monitored in the province, with 80.4 percent of the wells meeting standards.

Natural radioactive nuclides in the air, surface water, urban groundwater, urban centralized drinking water source areas, and soil in the province last year were within normal fluctuation ranges, and the activity concentration of artificial radioactive nuclides was not found to be abnormal.

All of these strong results are owed to Shanxi's efforts since last year in various aspects, such as systematically promoting biodiversity conservation, enhancing ecological protection and restoration in the Yellow River Basin, strengthening emergency response to heavy pollution weather, and resolving soil pollution risks in agricultural and construction land in a timely manner.