[samuel]

China has no voters, so they don't need to be worried about public opinion(for now).

Furthermore, the effects of air pollution are more evident there so it's easier to sell the tradeoff, IMO(I know almost nothing about China, TBH).

[narism]

There are absolutely voters in China. True, the candidates for elections are vetted by the party but the cynical might say there is little difference between that and the primary/convention process in US politics.

The CCP central leadership often responds to public opinion when local leaders are shown to be corrupt/incompetent (or scapegoated for other reasons).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_China

[dragonelite]

China has a lot of polling stations, they can crawl social media to get what is annoying citizens. They also have a long and rich workers uprising and rebellion.

There is enough to be worried about.