The government of China is currently fighting a battle on two fronts, trying to battle dangerous levels of air pollution and combat the country’s slowing economy simultaneously. According to a report by the environment ministry only eight of 74 large cities met the government’s basic air quality standards in 2014.

Both Beijing and Shanghai failed the assessment with the most polluted cities located in north-eastern Hebei, near the capital. Most of the cities that met the standards were located in the eastern part of the country.

The government assessment was based on readings of pollutants such as PM2.5 and PM10 (types of airborne particulate matter) as well as nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and ozone.

While the report may sound bleak in its assessment of Chinese pollution, it is an improvement over the prior year. According to the BBC, only three of the 74 cities passed the test in 2013.

In 2014, in addition to signing a historic climate change agreement with the United States, the Chinese government declared ‘war’ on air pollution, promising that the country would eliminate smog in 30 years.

In addition to a variety of other measures, the government pledged to restrict the use of coal and remove millions of cars from the road. In Hebei alone 8,000 coal plants have been closed.

The country however, is facing the environment vs. economy battle faced by many developed countries. China is facing its first economic slow down in many years and this has caused some pushback against the factory closures.

“They have promised to do all these things – speed up reform, fight pollution and manage debt risk – yet at the same time want to reach the same growth target as last year. Although the reforms are good in the long run, in the short term they’re more likely to be negative for growth, so this target creates even more uncertainty,” Yao Wei, China economist for Societe Generale told the Guardian in March, 2014.

At the same time, the smog produced by the factories is showing signs of slowing the economy further.

“Multinational corporations like Coca-Cola and Panasonic are increasingly offering expat executives “hardship packages,” which include allowances for frequent trips to their home countries and additional ‘bonuses’, to entice them to stay in China’s polluted cities,” reported Forbes in August of last year.

The World Health Organization (WHO) also released some startling statistics, in March of last year. The agency stated that, according to their research, 40 percent of the 7 million people killed by air pollution globally in 2012 were in China. The report stated that air pollution killed more people globally than diabetes, AIDS and road accidents combined.

The report also indicated long range risk factors such as the finding that babies whose mothers were exposed to a Chinese coal-fired power plant had poorer learning and memory skills.

“Few risks have a greater impact on global health today than air pollution,” said Maria Neira, director of the WHO’s department for public health, environmental and social determinants of health at the time.

Going into the second year of the “War on Air Pollution” it is unclear how, or how well, China will manage to balance balance short term vs long term economic impacts or short vs. long term environmental impacts.