BEIJING – Wenzy Duan dreams about becoming a delegate to the United Nations.

“I know this [ambition] is pretty high,” said the 17-year old Beijing native.  “But I think I can give it a shot.” 

To prepare, Duan wants to study international relations at an American college – someplace like the University of Washington. “I hear [it] is good at social science," she said.

The University of Washington is one of approximately 10 U.S. universities Duan plans to apply to in the coming year with the help of an education consultant she hired last summer.

“I know that the scores is not the only thing that the university will consider whether you can get in or not,” said the high school senior.

Duan is not alone.  Today, China sends more of its students to America than any other country. During the 2010-11 academic year, 157,588 Chinese students were studying in the U.S. – an increase of 23 percent from the previous year, according to the Institute of International Education. 

The growing market of Chinese students wanting to go to the U.S. has created various cottage industries in China and the U.S. –  among them are education consultants who help students navigate the maze of college applications and "brokers" representing American universities who seek student candidates paying full tuition. But it's also fueled anxiety among American students and their parents about increased competition from abroad.

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Education consultants: the main cottage industry
“When [Chinese students] decide to come to the U.S. and study in the U.S. school, they have no idea,” said Steven Ma, president of ThinkTank Learning, the consulting group with which Duan is working.  "What do colleges in the U.S. look for anyway?  What do they want?  What type of students they want?  And that’s where we come in.”

ThinkTank Learning, based in Santa Clara, Calif., offers tutoring and college counseling.  Most of the students contracting its services have been Asian-American, but Ma said increasingly his firm began fielding calls from mainland Chinese families wanting their advice. 

Eventually ThinkTank Learning opened a branch in Shenzhen in 2009 and then in Beijing a year later.  It charges anywhere from $17,000 to almost $40,000 for tailored consultation packages lasting six to 12 months, dispensing advice on choosing the right schools, writing essays, or preparing for interviews.  

“They’ll just tell you when you need to get something done by what deadline and how do you prepare your application to the school’s standards,” said Julia Yin, Duan’s mother, a petroleum engineer who hails from Hunan province.  “Basically, everything is DIY [do it yourself.]"

Go West, Young Man (and Woman)
China sent its first student to an American college in 1850: A native of Guangdong Province named Yung Wing earned his degree from Yale University, paving the way for thousands more over the following century.

The flow of students from China to America dried up in the 1950s when the establishment of the People’s Republic of China gave way to tumult and isolation, and did not re-start until 1974 1978.

From then until just a few years ago, "It was almost all graduate students, most of them funded by the host universities through research assistantships or teaching assistantships," said Peggy Blumenthal, senior counselor to the president at the Institute of International Education (IIE).

Now, Chinese undergraduates drive the growth, particularly in the past two years.  At the start of the 2006-07 academic year, 9,955 Chinese undergrads were enrolled in U.S. schools. The following year, that figure jumped to 16,450.  By the 2010-11 academic year, 56,976 undergraduates made up a third of all Chinese students living in the U.S.

“What you’re seeing is the growth of the middle class of China who can really afford to send their kids to the U.S.,” said Blumenthal.  “The Chinese undergrads are all coming virtually self-funded.”

The fact that so many students pay their own way has not gone unnoticed.

"Foreign students spend about $21 billion a year in the U.S. in tuition and living expenses for them and their families,” said Charles Bennett, Minister-Counselor for Consular Affairs at the U.S. embassy in Beijing – where Ambassador Gary Locke has made among his top priorities the expansion of visa processing capacity in China.

“That’s a very large sum of money for U.S. academic institutions,” continued Bennett, especially as so many face shrinking endowments or reduced state funding.

The Chinese comprise at least 21 percent of all international students newly enrolled in American schools, which means that they and their families contribute roughly $4 billion to the American economy, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Edging out American students in America?
Recent reports, however, have suggested mainland Chinese students and their ability to pay full tuition are costing American students placement in American colleges. A bankrupt state school system in California – one of the most popular destinations for Chinese students – has meant that its well-regarded schools are seeing record enrollments from out-of-state and international students. 

For the 2010-11 academic year, California welcomed the most international students – 96,535. And for the tenth year in a row the University of Southern California was the leading host U.S. institution for overseas students, enrolling 8,615, according to the IIE.

But the IIE argues adding mainland Chinese students is helpful for diversity.  “Most Americans will not study abroad. On the other hand, their careers will be global,” observed Blumenthal.  “They need to learn how to interact with professionals from other countries, and many of them will be from China.  There are very few industries or business not affected by China.”

Moreover, at the graduate level, Chinese students aren’t competing against American students for a seat in the classroom, according to Blumenthal.  “There still aren’t enough Americans in the pipeline wanting to get graduate training in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math,” she said.

But detractors note other challenges have surfaced as a result of so many Chinese students going to U.S. schools.  Among them is whether some applicants from the mainland are cheating their way into admissions by falsifying their academic records or achievements. 

One consulting company in Beijing that works U.S. universities, Zinch China, says 90 percent of Chinese undergraduates submit false recommendation letters for their U.S. college applications and that 70 percent enlist someone else to write their essays.

The dishonesty works the other way, too.  A growing number of “education brokers,” who work on behalf of U.S. institutions to solicit Chinese students, have led to misrepresentations and predatory fees, according to a revealing report from Bloomberg News. Some agents promise admission to top-flight schools, charge exorbitant fees, in some instances including a portion of scholarship funds, and students can end up at schools that are a far cry from the "dream schools" they hope to attend.  

Can China produce innovative thinkers?
The desire among Chinese students to seek an American college degree has grown stronger over the years owing to a number of factors.

Above everything else, there is the fierce competition for gaining admissions to a preeminent Chinese university. The selection process is decided solely by the gaokao, an annual national college entrance examination that lasts nine grueling hours over two to three days.

This past year, more than 9 million students across China took the gaokao.  And believe it or not, that number has been declining since 2008 as more students opt out of the gaokao and sign up for exams like the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test), both of which are generally prerequisites for applying to any U.S. college or university.

A lively debate is growing about whether China’s education system can produce innovative thinkers who can enable the country to lead – not just catch up with or follow in the footsteps of industrialized economies like the U.S. or Britain. Such concerns triggered a widespread discussion online when Steve Jobs died earlier this year.

“The students here are not as robotic as Americans think,” said Gene Hwang, a 27-year-old Taiwanese-American, who has been working in China for ThinkTank Learning for almost two years.  “But they are held back by some of the systems in schools, which emphasize rote memorization….  We work with them on [developing] critical thinking.”

Broadening those horizons
“When I get into America, I can get [a liberal] education [that] could open my mind,” said Zhang Yuqi, a soft-spoken but intense 17-year-old high school senior.

He’s been working with a ThinkTank Learning consultant for three months, reviewing which schools to apply to and working on his essays.  A possible math major, he has his eye on Carnegie-Mellon and Emory where he hopes to find a climate that differs from his elite Beijing high school, which he says has too many “planned activities.”

Duan wants to study in the U.S., because “they accept all different kinds of different ideas.  You can dream about anything,” she said.  “In America, I can experience more…maybe all kinds of things I will never experience in China.”

For high school junior Dolly Luo, it's simply about getting the best education.  “The U.S. has the most well-developed college education," said the 16-year-old Beijing native who loves Harry Potter and dreams about attending an Ivy League college.

Her parents have similar faith in the U.S. college experience.

“She will have more opportunities, and it will broaden her horizons,” said William Luo.  In fact, Dolly’s father had harbored his own U.S. scholarly ambitions, but he didn’t have the financial resources to enable him to pursue his graduate studies in America.

“I hope when Dolly goes abroad and she learns American values or Western values that she can absorb the Western education – the good parts: the culture, the education,” continued Luo.  “In China, we would need that.” 

SEOUL, South Korea — As one journalist put it, it said how much we all knew about North Korea that for the better part of Wednesday morning, most of the world remained in the dark about just when — if at all  — the state funeral for the country's late leader Kim Jong Il had begun. 

But finally around 2 p.m in Seoul, a feed of the funeral proceedings began transmitting. We watched online, impressed by the staging and the direction. 

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Thousands of people in olive drab stood under snowfall in front of the Kumsusan Memorial Palace — where Kim Jong Il’s body had been lying in state and where that of his father Kim Il Sung is also housed — as a procession of vehicles drove past, including the hearse led by Kim Jong Il's son and successor, Kim Jong Un.

Under a dramatic soundtrack and the emotion-laden voice of a North Korean broadcaster, the continuous wailing of mourners could be heard. Cameras pushed into close-ups of rows and rows of men and women in military uniform sobbing. 

• PhotoBlog: North Korean heir leads procession

As the procession wound its way through Pyongyang and the snowfall grew heavier, footage of civilians began to appear.  Dressed in thick winter coats, they craned their necks and covered their mouths as they wept.  Those in the front — closest to the cameras —jumped up and down with great emotion.  Occasionally, a row of soldiers appeared expressionless and stoic.

As the video was broadcast — and despite the "live" banner on some cable stations, it was still unclear whether the footage was being transmitted live or had been recorded earlier until one news agency confirmed it was indeed the former.

The mood in Seoul was decidedly different.

'Like father, like son'
Among a small community of North Koreans who fled their homeland years ago, there was scorn for the man they once called their "Dear Leader" and a touch of hope that his death may usher in long-awaited change.

"Kim Jong Il made three million people starve to death," said Kim Jung-geum, a reporter and radio announcer with Free North Korea Radio.  She escaped from the North eight years ago and has been living in Seoul for the past six years.

• Will younger Kim's aunt, uncle be puppet masters?

"Initially I thought, wow, now we can go home. But the feeling didn’t last even a day," said Kim Sung-min, founder of the station —which broadcasts a one-hour shortwave radio program back into the North every day.  

"It is the third generation leadership," said Kim, who defected from North Korea 11 years ago. "Like father, like son.  There is no hope. There is zero per cent chance of change as Kim Jong Un inheried Kim Jong Il's system."

His colleague was willing to be a bit more optimistic.  "The dictatorship is over," said Kim Jung-geum quietly.  "A new era will begin with 2012.  I expect that."

Both of them, however, did agree on one thing.  They remembered when North Korean founder Kim Il Sung died.

"I was so sad that I skipped two meals," recalled Kim Sung-min, who was serving in the North Korean military in a northern province at the time.  "It was as if the sun had fallen to earth."

• Archival video: Kim Il Sung dies

"I cried for Kim Il Sung," said Kim Jung-geum, who was a propaganda teacher at the time.  "We had a food ration system.  People had salaries then.  So I genuinely grieved for his death."

Among South Koreans there was largely indifference.

A trio of college students said they were initially worried about the possible ramifications of Kim Jong Il’s death.  "But now I feel a lot better," said Lee Kyung-min, more keen on visiting a nearby museum than thinking about regional security. None of them were interested in the funeral proceedings.

"It was big news," said Cho Nam-hyun, a reporter for Dong-A Ilbo. "But personally, I think of it just as a head of state who died."

• Were circumstances of Kim Jong Il's death fabricated?

The indifference doesn't come as a surprise to analysts in South Korea. 

"We've been living under the gun for the past 60 years," said Dr. Hahm Chaibong, president of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies.  "You can’t count the number of crises that we've had over the years.  Be it assassinations, commando raids, downing of airplanes, terrorist bombings, and of course more recently nuclear experiments and shelling of islands."

Hahm also offered a final somber thought.

"By and large everyone has learned a lesson as far as to what to expect," he said.  "Everybody knows that there isn’t all that much to expect in terms of radical change….  If North Korea is going to change, it's not going to because of something we do in the outside world.  They will be the ones who will be undertaking changes because they think it's necessary and because they decide it's time they do it."

Follow NBC News' Adrienne Mong (@adriennemong) on Twitter.

• SLIDESHOW: The life of Kim Jong Il
• SLIDESHOW: Reaction to death of Kim Jong Il
• SLIDESHOW: Journey into North Korea
• Browse more of msnbc.com's North Korea coverage

Updated at 8:08 a.m. ET 

PYONGYANG, North Korea -- Wailing and clutching at their hearts, tens of thousands of North Koreans lined the snowy streets of Pyongyang on Wednesday as the hearse carrying late leader Kim Jong Il's wound its way through the capital for a final farewell.

Son and successor Kim Jong Un led the procession, which is part of a two-day state funeral. Top military and party officials, including uncle Jang Song Thaek, were also part of the lead group.

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Sobs and wails filled the air along the memorial route, which state media said was about 25 miles long.

At the end of the procession, Kim Jong Un walked along with the limousine with his hand cocked in a salute. He stood head-bowed with top officials as rifles fired 21 times, then saluted again as goose-stepping soldiers carrying flags and rifles marched by.

The funeral procession, which began and ended at Kumsusan Memorial Palace, passed by huge crowds of mourners, most of them standing in the snow with their heads bare. Many screamed, stamped their feet, flailed their arms and wept as soldiers struggled to keep them from spilling onto the road.

• As North Korea mourns, its neighbor shrugs

The mourners included many members of the country's 1.2 million-strong armed forces.

Kim's two other sons, Kim Jong Nam and Kim Jong Chol, were not spotted.

Kim Jong Il, who led the nation with an iron fist following his father Kim Il Sung's death in 1994, died of a heart attack Dec. 17 at age 69, according to state media.

• PhotoBlog: North Korean heir leads procession

Heavy snow was falling in Pyongyang, which state media characterized in the early days of mourning as proof that the skies were "grieving" for Kim as well. 

"How can the sky not cry?" a weeping soldier standing in the snow said to state TV. "The people ... are all crying tears of blood."

A national memorial service is due to take place at noon Thursday, state media said.

Updated at 7:03 a.m. ET: Speaking from Seoul, NBC News' Adrienne Mong tells TODAY that as video footage of procession was only available via state media, it is not possible to know how much of the grieving was "staged."

Updated at 6:28 a.m. ET: An essay in Workers' Party mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun, which was carried in English by the Korean Central News Agency, says Kim Jong Un will take "warm care of the people left by Kim Jong Il."

Updated at 4:22 a.m. ET: Angus Walker, Beijing correspondent for Britain's ITV, examines why North Koreans haven't chosen this moment to overthrow the Kim dynasty. "The regime knows its power relies on the power of propaganda," he writes. "In North Korea he was the only hero, the only film and TV star, the only person pictured in the papers. North Koreans were told he was the most famous person on earth, in a world without Hollywood or the Internet many believe it, he was a religion, a cult, a god and a king combined."

Updated at 4:15 a.m. ET: Britain's former ambassador to North Korea tells the BBC the future of the country's regime is "unsustainable".

Updated at 4:02 a.m. ET: Sky News' foreign affairs editor Tim Marshall questions how much of the emotion is real. "If the camera is on you ... you know what is expected," he says.

Updated at 3:02 a.m. ET: North Korea state TV broadcast of funeral procession ends.

Updated at 2:59 a.m. ET: Gunfire during ceremony "still doesn't mask the sound of wailing," NBC News' Adrienne Mong (@adriennemong) reports.

Updated at 2:50 a.m. ET: BNO News' Michael van Poppel (@mpoppel) cites North Korea state media as saying mourners shouting: "Fatherly general, don't go, please! Never, never! Come back please!"

• Will younger Kim's aunt, uncle be puppet masters?

Updated at 2:26 a.m. ET: Chico Harlan (@chicoharlan), the Washington Post's East Asia correspondent, tweets: "N. Korea is so close to comedy but obviously a tragedy. Seeing this guy, no matter the stagecraft, made me sad." Click here to see the photo.

Updated at 2:16 a.m. ET: BBC News' Lucy Williamson points out that many "senior military and party officials ... may well now be jostling for influence in the new regime.

"Some say North Korea's reluctance to open up the funeral ceremony to foreign delegations may signal that those hierarchies have not yet been fully agreed," she adds.

• Politics trump hunger in North Korea

Updated at 2:12 a.m. ET:  "After motorcade passed, some North Koreans seem to be leaving quickly," BNO News' Michael van Poppel (@mpoppel) tweets.

Updated at 1:38 a.m. ET: "I think a lot of that is fake crying," Los Angeles Times' Beijing bureau chief Barbara Demick tells Britain's Sky News. "There is a lot of pressure to out do your neighbor in showing your grief." Demick is also author of "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea."

Updated at 1:22 a.m. ET: Citing U.N. data, Reuters notes that the average North Korean now dies three-and-a-half years earlier than they did when "Eternal President" Kim Il Sung died in 1994.

• Archival video: Kim Il Sung dies

North Korea is one of the most closed and poorest societies on earth, ranking 194 out of 227 countries in terms of per capita wealth, according to the CIA World Factbook.

Updated at 1:15 a.m. ET: NBC News' Adrienne Mong (@adriennemong) tweets that a "soundtrack of wailing" and "emotive announcer" feature as part of North Korean state TV's coverage. 

• Were circumstances of Kim Jong Il's death fabricated?

Updated at 1:08 a.m ET: North Korea carried out a meticulously choreographed funeral for late leader Kim Jong Il on Wednesday and affirmed that the country was now in the "warm care" of his young son, extending the Kim family's hold on power to a third generation.

Footage broadcast on North Korea's state television showed Kim's youngest son and successor Kim Jong Un walking next to his father's hearse.

Foreign dignitaries in the city had been asked to gather at a sports stadium shortly before noon to be taken to see the hearse pass at the start of the funeral procession through Pyongyang, according to a diplomat who asked that her name not be used due to the sensitivity of the details.

• SLIDESHOW: The life of Kim Jong Il
• SLIDESHOW: Reaction to death of Kim Jong Il
• SLIDESHOW: Journey into North Korea
• Browse more of msnbc.com's North Korea coverage

The Associated Press, Reuters, msnbc.com staff and NBC News contributed to this report.

By Adrienne Mong and Bo Gu

HAIMEN, Guangdong Province—It wouldn’t have been fair or accurate to call it a China Spring, but for a moment it was worth wondering: Was this the beginning of a Guangdong Spring?

Since September, residents in a fishing village called Wukan, in the southern coastal province of Guangdong, had been protesting against their local government over, specifically, illegal land grabs and, more generally, corruption.  This was a town where one man had held sway as the Communist Party chief for four decades.

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The situation grew explosive two weekends ago when one of the protest organizers died in police custody, triggering a widespread and cohesive revolt that saw thousands of people run the local officials and police out of town—the first time the Communist Party appeared to have lost total control of a town.

The authorities responded by laying siege on Wukan, preventing food and other supplies from reaching the 20,000-strong population, and censoring all mention of the latest developments in Chinese media or on the Internet.  In turn, the residents welcomed foreign and Hong Kong journalists to cover their plight.

Negotiations between the two sides kicked into high gear even as the situation escalated. The villagers threatened to march to the government offices of a nearby town unless their demands were met, potentially pitting them against thousands of riot and paramilitary police deployed along the main road leading in and out of Wukan.

In the end, cooler tempers prevailed amidst government compromises, but just as the Wukan standoff appeared to ease, reports of more protests nearby surfaced on Tuesday on the Internet.

Suddenly, the province in which its Communist Party head had promoted a “Happy Guangdong” campaign no longer seemed so happy.  At least not in this southeastern coastal corner.

At least three other pockets of unrest had flared up in districts of a large city near Wukan:  two of the groups were protesting similar examples of illegal land seizures and a third, the largest outbreak of demonstrations, was over government plans to build a coal-fired power plant in Haimen.

Though difficult to confirm, the initial reports described thousands of residents converging on the main local government office and organizing a sit-in on a key highway entrance to protest the development plans.  Local residents were quoted as saying they hoped foreign journalists would cover their story.

Before long, photographs emerged on Sina Weibo and other Chinese microblogs showing large numbers of paramilitary police in riot gear lining up against civilians in Haimen, a large town about 70 miles away from Wukan.  Tear gas was fired and clashes ensued.  Rumors also circulated that at least two boys had been killed in the confrontations; the government denied them.

Protests are not unusual in China.  In fact, according to the most recent official statistics, 2009 saw more than 90,000 “mass incidents,” as the Chinese government calls protests, across the country.  Land grabs and pollution concerns are among the top grievances.

Although the protests in Wukan and Haimen appear unrelated, it seemed a remarkable coincidence that two demonstrations adopting similar tactics would spring up within several dozen miles of one another. 

Heavy-handed police tactics
On Thursday, the streets of Haimen looked like those of any other comparable-sized Chinese town: food stalls, shops, sleepy government buildings, a high school, and a population that relies mostly on motorbikes to get around.

Mid-morning, dozens of those motorbikes were massed near the Haimen highway entrance.  In the distance, scores of black-and blue-uniformed police wearing helmets were standing behind barricades that had been pulled across the toll gate to the highway.

A large gas station on the corner looked open, but was in fact not.  The station's attendants in bright yellow jackets were lazing around, directing traffic to the next station.  The only energy came from a discussion about the power plant taking place among some of motorbike riders.

A short excursion on the highway itself revealed a sizeable police presence.  Police vans lined up against the side, interspersed with ambulances, fire engines, and water cannon trucks.  Dozens of police in riot gear sat on the ground.  Near several other highway entrance ramps, police vehicles could be spotted behind the gates of nearby compounds.

A little over an hour later, the crowd around the main entrance ramp had grown.  Motorbikes whizzed back and forth a couple of hundred feet away from the police barricade.  Many of the riders were young.

Suddenly, a pop rang into the air and a group of young teenagers were scrambling back away from the highway barriers—a plume of smoke rose above them.  The teens had tried to sidle up along the side.  A murmur of “tear gas” arose in the crowd as people began rushing away, covering their faces.  Nostrils burned.

“They don’t have the right to treat people like this,” said a 24-year old local resident who only offered his surname, Li.  “Using tear gas?  It’s wrong.”

Rumors of cancer
A few miles away, a large power plant with two smokestacks sat under the hazy sun.  It was not in operation; local reports said the government had suspended it as well as the plans to build the second plant until further notice. 

Haimen residents called Hongdong — the hamlet of one-storey homes nearest the power plant —“Cancer Village.”  But inside Hongdong, a man working in a local medical clinic denied that cancer patients were on the rise.

Back in front of the highway entrance, a young man named Chen and his two friends on motorbikes watched the police.  They had joined in the protests on Wednesday, because they, too, were angry about the health hazards posed by the power plant.

“The ocean is polluted [because of the run-off from the plant],” said Chen, also 24 years old.  “You can’t fish in it any more.”

He and others in the crowd said the number of cancer cases in Haimen had grown since the power plant was constructed in 2009 and quoted local papers as saying 80 percent of the cancer patients at a major regional hospital came from their township.

Chen said news of the protest had spread by QQ, a popular instant messaging service, until it was blocked on Tuesday evening.  Then they relied on word of mouth.

On the following day, the protesters were demonstrating peacefully, without weapons, said Chen, but the police rushed out from behind the blockade into the crowd and began beating up people—including women. 

Many of the participants on Wednesday, according to residents, were young Chinese.  Several were injured, and countless others arrested—just as was the case on Tuesday.

They had picked the highway entrance, said Chen, because it would attract the greatest attention.  Unlike the existing power plant itself or the land where the second plant has been designated—both of which are removed from the main roads.

Hearing about Wukan
“Were you in Wukan?” was a question that crept up a few times in conversation with Haimen’s residents.  In the past couple of days, Chinese media had begun publishing reports on the dispute next door.  Moreover, many had heard through friends or acquaintances or on the Internet about the months-long confrontation in Wukan.

But no one said Wukan had inspired them to take action. 

“This [environment issue] has been a problem for us for a while,” said Li.

There appears to be another difference between Wukan and Haimen.  Local officials from Haimen have promised to come up with some sort of resolution in five days, according to Chen.  But later on Thursday evening, he said that many more young Chinese had been rounded up and detained.

BEIJING—While China’s chief climate negotiator is getting rock star treatment at the Durban climate summit this week, his peers back in the capital are suffering a third straight day of foul air.

As a leading Canadian newspaper put it, China provided “the few glimmers of hope at the stalled negotiations” in Durban, where "photographers and television journalists swarmed around the chief Chinese negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, as he entered a news conference on Monday to announce his list of conditions for considering a legally binding treaty on carbon emissions after 2020."

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It seems that despite being the world's biggest carbon emitter, China could be the key to a deal on a legally binding agreement to reduce emissions.

However, not many glimmers of hope could be spotted back home.

A persistent 'fog'
The Chinese state-run print media all ran headline stories Tuesday morning on the persistent "fog" that has blanketed Beijing and parts of the country’s northeast since the weekend. (See video above of the "hazardous" level of smog on Monday).

Much of the coverage focused on the hundreds of flights cancelled at the Beijing Capital International airport—the world’s second busiest hub—or the rising and very vocal concerns about air pollution.  Some local reports referred to sales of air filter masks and air filter machines spiking in the past week.

Still more reports tried to cast the air pollution issue as one of sovereignty.  "The heavy fog or smog that has shrouded Beijing in the past couple of days has triggered a renewed round of debate over the different air pollution standards applied by China and the United States," said an opinion piece in the Global Times, a state-run newspaper with a strong nationalist overtone.

But at least these same newspapers are now calling it "smog" rather than "fog," as they were just a day ago.  The China Daily, another state-run newspaper, ran a headline on page 3 crying, "Exposure to smog is severe hazard."  Later in the day, the paper’s web site posted four stark images of the same location showing changes in air visibility. (See photo above). The images are pretty staggering.

Only 13 days of 'good' air this year so far

And as we write this, the ever-trusty and ever-reliable @BeijingAir Twitter feed has been down five hours, prompting followers to wonder whether the pollution has finally gotten to the air quality index monitor that lives on top of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

A sobering analysis of the @BeijingAir feed can be found in this post by China Dialogue, which notes that the improvements in air quality claimed by officials at the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau "are due to irregularities in the monitoring and reporting of air quality – and not to less polluted air."

Moreover, based on the analysis using the @BeijingAir data, this year there have only been 13 days of "good" air quality. 

Buried further amidst the quantitative data was one more alarming point: "…if Beijing’s fine particulate concentration even reached the polluted levels of Los Angeles, life expectancy may increase by over five years."

We at NBC News Beijing are trying to claw back a few months to our life span.  We have just taken delivery of two air filter machines for the bureau.

By Adrienne Mong and Bo Gu

BEIJING — If there were one place that is living proof that global carbon dioxide emissions in 2010 jumped the largest amount on record, it’s got to be the Middle Kingdom.

Emissions leapt 5.9 per cent last year, according to the Global Carbon Project.

And the world’s biggest emitter —yes, China — was a big contributor.  It pumped 2.2 billion tons of carbon into the air, compared to the 1.5 billion tons of carbon by the U.S.

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On days like Monday — and there have been way too many this year — it feels like Beijing is the receptacle.

'Hazardous' days
We’ve already written about it, but this time returning to the Chinese capital after a break, I found my hardy NBC News colleagues ordering air filter machines for their homes and air filter masks for cycling (to get around the traffic).

Monday, while the @BeijingAir index — which comes from an air quality monitor housed atop the U.S. embassy in Beijing — tweeted hourly “hazardous” readings all day, we took a peek at readings back home to see how levels of air pollution were faring across the Pacific.

Across a map of the United States, it was a depressing monochromatic “green” color signifying “good” quality air — with only a few slashes of “yellow,” meaning “moderate.” 

Bear in mind, according to the chart developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “hazardous” is the highest alert level, which would trigger “health warnings of emergency conditions. The entire population is more likely to be affected,” according to the site.

There were no readings from the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau’s (EPB) own air monitor until mid-afternoon Monday, when it acknowledged “slight pollution.” 

Last month, the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection suggested it was finally heeding growing concerns among Beijing residents’ about air pollution.

The ministry said it would begin publishing measurements for the smallest particulate matter or PM2.5, also considered the most dangerous to human health because they’re tiny enough to enter the lungs and cause damage to the respiratory system.

On Thursday, however, the Beijing EPB emphatically announced PM2.5 readings for the city would not be made public.

A 'mirage'
To add insult to health injury, officials have been quoted in local newspapers as saying they will set up a new air monitoring system for Beijing in … Tianjin — a metropolis 80 miles away from the capital.

Mind you, photos posted on the Shanghaiist blogsite suggest we in Beijing are not the only ones suffering.

(There’s been plenty of supporting visual evidence coming out of Beijing all day.  One user of Weibo, the popular Chinese microblog, posted a photo of high-rises apparently floating above a cloud of pollution, calling it a “mirage.”  And YouKu, a Chinese version of YouTube, posted a video of this morning’s commute.)

Soho property mogul Pan Shiyi, who led an online petition to get PM2.5 readings published by the EPB, has begun posting on his Weibo account screen shots from an iPhone app that compiles the U.S. embassy’s BeijingAir index.   

In the meantime, Chinese authorities are still determined to call the smog by any other name.

Flight after flight on the Beijing Capital International airport website was shown to be cancelled — owing to “fog.” A Xinhua news agency report described it as “heavy fog.”

But an AFP report called it “smog,” tallying the airport casualties: 213 domestic and 15 international cancelled flights.

See Shanghaiist for more photos of the smog in Beijing and China

Update: Since this posting, a state-run newspaper, The Global Times, quoted meteorological officials as saying the “dense fog” enveloping Beijing and parts of the northeast will persist until Friday. One official described it as a “normal climate condition in Beijing.” Good thing we got our masks.