How you pressure the Chinese into reforms
Friday, January 13, 2012 at 12:33PM 
What Beijingers refer to (roughly) as "the man taking a dump" building, because it looks like somebody squatting over a toilet.US officials trying to get China to go public with genuinely accurate smog/pollution data, but Beijing refuses, despite the obvious nature of the extreme air pollution in the city and elsewhere.
So instead of a frontal assault, the US Embassy just starts posting its own readings on the web via Twitter.
Beijing now becomes the first Chinese city to publish hourly readings based on the preffered tight measurement standard of (PM2.5, which measures the tinier particles that go deep into the lungs). The presumptive new premier, Li Keqiang, gearing up for his own "Grandpa Wen" model, made a public plea for this three weeks ago.
Nicely done, US Embassy.
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Reader Comments (2)
That would be the Obama State Department, I think, that you've recently enjoyed crapping on.
Yes, the US Embassy belongs to the US State Department. Not a lot shock to be found there.
My complaints with State have mostly been the top-down leadership. When I've worked with US embassies abroad, I've tended to have very nice things to say about them. That just tells you that there's a difference between career types and politicos on top.
If you read me long enough, you'll note that I tend to praise and condemn the same institutions time and again, whether the Dems or the GOP is running them - odd that.