It was as if somebody had flipped a switch.
In the two-week run-up to a military parade in Beijing on Thursday — a massive spectacle to mark the 70th anniversary of Japan's defeat in World War II — the Chinese capital’s notoriously polluted sky was an azure blue. Then on Friday morning, less than 24 hours later, a blanket of noxious smog once again covered the city, leaving many residents puzzled over how it had come back so fast.
On Monday, the government gave an explanation.
According to a Monday morning report in the state-run Beijing Times, officials cleaned up Beijing’s air in advance of the parade by suspending or restricting the operations of 12,255 coal-burning boilers, factories and cement-mixing stations scattered among seven provinces.