APEC blue

General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party & President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli were directly in charge of the clean-up campaign .

In addition, 434,000 cadres in Beijing and nearby provinces and municipalities, including Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong, Henan and inner Mongolia, were involved in the inspection work.

Roughly 10,000 factories in the regions surrounding Beijing were forced to suspend production during APEC, and an additional 39,000 ran on reduced schedules to largely alleviate pollution.

[10] As a result, real estate trade, marriage registration, food delivery, funerals and hospital appointment system were all influenced and disturbed during APEC.

[13] Most foreign media showed a doubtful position for "APEC blue," considering it as a "face-saving" strategy of China’s rulers and holding a suspicious view about its sustainable future.

Young Professionals in Foreign Policy claimed that APEC blue "was a piece of the illusion", because "President Xi Jinping used the summit partly as a show to demonstrate that China’s economic development was the linchpin for the entire Asia-Pacific region".

[21] It will also bring with heavy pollution, as the heating system springs into life, regular volumes of traffic return to the roads, and local industry seeks to make up for losses.

[24] On February 28, 2015 Under the Dome, an independent documentary related to China’s air pollution by famous reporter Chai Jing, was released online, and received more than 100 million cumulative views within 48 hours.

[26][27] On March 7, China’s new environmental minister Chen Jining attended his first press conference in Lianghui, and vowed stricter legal enforcement for improving pollution.