It would be interesting to see, if those meters at US embassies were moved around to determine whether theres some strategy to keep the air around tose areas at better levels.

The pollution as a whole is such a large threat to social stability, that these days those measurements simply dont rise anymore. The data probably gets cleaner on a yearly basis on 3-5% - but its good news anyway.

Just as the economic indicators, its same. This is the news that the news have to be.

could be embassy districts have restricted traffic and are in more upmarket areas of town that dont have residential crowding and gas usage

@Peter: I think pollution will likely become a large threat to social stability in the future as more & more people decide to raise hell about it, but I don't see that it's a large threat to social stability right now.

The Japanese, land grabs, and pollution are the only thing Chinese are willing to riot over.

@Alex: I take your point.

Well, Alien, ...thats what you think. What I think is that if the whole truth about pollution was out there, there would have been some bodies by now. This is something that must be prevented of course, in the glorious march. I would even take this as far by saying that Taiwan is in dire straits bcs of this pollution scandal, bcs the glory and honor needs to be repaired somehow. And there will be an effort too.

@Peter: If I understand you, I agree.

Yesterday or the day before the site showed "data unavailable" for the Kunming stations for a while. Since then the readings have been markedly lower. Zoom out a bit and you'll see the surrounding area still has the higher readings.

Maybe maintenance. Filters needed cleaning, (clears throat) hrrmmm!