China has opened a challenging chapter in its pollution battle, installing electric heaters in village homes near Beijing to cut winter coal-burning, but stoking discontent about rising power bills. The campaign is part of a bid by Communist Party leaders to clean the air in the city as urban dwellers grow frustrated by noxious smog that peaks in winter. China’s pollution crisis reflects decades of unrestrained industrialization. While lifting hundreds of millions of people from poverty, the boom also fouled China’s air, water and soil. The sprawling capital and its surrounding regions, home to more than 100 million people, is ground zero in the government’s three-year-old “war on pollution.” China’s government has on occasion closed factories and pulled cars off the road to limit pollution. Now it is trying to cut coal-burning by households, another contributor to Beijing’s smog. That means installing new equipment in million of village homes […]