Despite the invariable description of China’s air as ‘light-hearted blue’ in the People’s Daily, people began to be more and more bothered with the oppressive black smoggy mass before their own eyes. With more information accessible through the Internet, they also realized the air quality might not necessarily be the same elsewhere in the world. Things finally came to a head when posts appeared online, quoting the US Embassy Twitter feed that tracked air pollution in Beijing, and its number of followers was rapidly multiplied by Weibo. To their shock, people learned that on the day the level of PM 2.5 – the Particulate Matter less than 2.5 micrometers in size in the air – was marked in the Embassy monitor as ‘unhealthy for sensitive groups’, the air quality was still categorized as ‘excellent’ by the Beijing Environmental Bureau. It was actually made possible by excluding the level of PM 2.5, which was condemned by the Party officials as unheard of, unscientific, and unacceptable to China. In short, the American Embassy was accused of making something out of nothing – out of thin air.

At a press briefing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman went so far as to demand foreign embassies stop publishing their reports on air quality. He criticized the reports as illegal and irresponsible, and declared that the Beijing government alone should be authorized to monitor and publish the air quality information. In conclusion, he called for the Chinese people to trust the great and glorious Party, to repudiate the malicious misinformation as reported by the American Embassy.

What’s so face-losing for the Party authorities, the patriotism propaganda proved to be an utter failure. Almost unanimously people chose to believe the monitor in the American Embassy instead. It’s not too surprising in the days when they could not drink clean water, breathe fresh air, and see the azure sky. On the Internet, distrust of official air quality statistics started up like the unstoppable cacophony of cicadas in the summer, cutting through the firewalls of the frenzied governmental cyber control. It shook up the appearance of a ‘harmonious, prosperous society’ under the Party’s regime, which was undergoing a credibility bankruptcy. The people were sick and tired of the repeated ridiculous cover-up orchestrated from above …

Reading on, Chen wondered how that article could have survived online with the net cops patrolling around all the time. Then he noted that it was an article originally posted a couple of years earlier. Somebody must have saved it as a Word document and reposted it with the latest waves of toxic air overwhelming the country again. The reposted article would most likely be blocked soon. He printed out a hard copy and saved it to a file in his own computer as well.

Clicking on the mouse, he came upon another related Weibo post, which read like a sequence to the earlier one. Apparently, it was one of the most heated topics on the Internet.

Indeed, China is in an environmental crisis, a result of the GDP-oriented economic development and of the one-Party system corruption, for which people are now paying a terrible price.

The debate about the ‘American air quality monitor’ drew angry protests from the Chinese people. They condemned the government spokesman, comparing him to a thief in an ancient Chinese proverb – one who stuffs his own ears in the act of stealing a bell while hoping that others may not be able to hear anything just like him. In the last analysis, the clean air being so essential to people’s daily life, you cannot simply say, ‘Hold your breath, China.’ In a Weibo cartoon, underneath a picture of the Beijing spokesman’s solemn face, a netizen commented: ‘To say in the Beijing dialect, he just asks for a slap on the face.’

It did not take that long for the authorities to include, however reluctantly, the PM 2.5 level as part of the official air quality index. Needless to say, the same spokesman was now busy producing the reasons why it’s an officially acknowledged part of the index, rather than the unscientific fabrication on the part of the American Embassy …