China’s problems with air pollution are undermining government efforts to make the country more attractive to overseas talents. 55% of 2,000 foreign employees that Spring Professional polled last year – who had each lived in China for at least five years – said they had concerns about air quality, up from 23% in 2012. Air pollution has hurt recruitment for the past two years, said Ma Erman, head of overseas recruitment for language training company EF English in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province. “Hebei doesn’t have many advantages to compete with coastal provinces, which have better economies and offer higher salaries, and air pollution is making recruitment even more difficult,” she said. The average daily concentration of PM2.5 in the country’s 31 provincial level regions was 47 micrograms per cubic meter last year, down by 6% from 2015 levels. He Kebin, Dean of Tsinghua University’s School of Environment, predicted it could take 10 to 15 years for most of the heavily polluted Chinese cities to meet the national air quality standard.