(XINHUA)

Shown are tourists at Tiananmen Square in downtown Beijing.

On January 22, the municipal legislature of Beijing passed a regulation on air pollution control outlining emission controls and harsher penalties.

The Beijing Municipal People's Congress voted in favor of the regulation, the first of its kind for the capital, replacing a previous guideline that was issued in 2000.

The regulation said that Beijing will limit and gradually reduce the total discharge of major air pollutants by setting yearly quotas for district and county governments and individual polluters, as well as cutting coal burning and limiting car emissions.

The previous guideline targeted only the growth of emissions.

Frequent bouts of smog have been a major source of public discontent in Beijing. The city reported 58 days of serious pollution last year, and the average PM2.5 index, which measures hazardous fine particles, more than doubled the new national standard of 35 micrograms per cubic meter.