The city of Harbin, Heilongjiang province has set itself some ambitious goals over the next three years in reducing air pollution and improving air quality, with 33 rulings on clean coal utilization, coal-fired boiler emissions, heavy pollution emergency responses, and other areas.

The city government made the announcement at a press conference on April 21, where it said it is also encouraging non-government funds to help finance air pollution reduction projects and it has also come up with a 36.96-billion-yuan ($5.68 billion) plan aimed, with 31.3 billion yuan to be used to control coal burning, or 84.8 percent of the spending.

It says it expects to cut average concentrations of PM 2.5 to 53 micrograms per cubic meter, and reduce the number of days with heavy pollution by 50 percent to 21 days, by 2018.

As of April 20, it has had 71 days with good air quality this year, an increase of 29 days over the same period last year, while there were 40 days with pollution, or 26 fewer than in 2015.