Sure, Kunming is the provincial capital so a worst case example. The rest of the province is pretty damn clean, and being semi-rural to outright wilderness much cleaner in most cases than western cities. Personally I'm on the next lake over... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Fuxian ... it's like Kunming 15 years ago. We still have horse-drawn carts, and you can go fishing, horseriding, or paragliding with ease. We also have some of the oldest fossils in the world, a submerged neolithic village and a not-so-secret Chinese navy submarine testing base.

Can't be worse than Beijing. Shangrila is very nice.