It's a very similar story, actually: as China industrialized, it has very similarly realized that curtailing air pollution is an extremely important issue with benefits that outweigh costs.
It has continually tightened standards and its overall air quality is improving (although it still has notable areas where more improvement is needed)
Exactly. The USA brags about its environmental improvements but fails to mention it exported plenty of manufacturing to do that. Come the summer when the media highlights the smog over Beijing, The West ownes a good chunk of that violation of Mother Nature.
China, etc is cheaper not only because of the cost of labor but because of lack of environmental protections.
We know now that while these laws have local impacts they clearly also have global impacts and they are not always positive.
Attempting to use the local success of the EPA Clean Air Act to justify a flat 16%+ increase in the price of a widely used and important commodity is inappropriate.
For Americans. For the Chinese? Probably a different story.