LONDON—China’s biggest political scandal in decades has embroiled not just the U.S. but increasingly the U.K.

The series of publicly known events culminating in the removal of rising political star Bo Xilai from power appeared to have been triggered by an attempt by Bo’s former police chief to seek asylum in a U.S. consulate in Chengdu back in February.

However, it looks increasingly like it was the death of a British businessman last year that set off the chain of events.  And while it might not lead to any firings in the U.K. government, it certainly appears to have ruffled feathers in London.

Now it looks as though Bo’s ex-crimefighter, Wang Lijun, had evidence suggesting that Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai had engineered Heywood’s death. 

Leon Neal / AFP - Getty Images

Chinese Communist Party official Li Changchun and British Prime Minister David Cameron met at Downing Street Tuesday.

New details on Tuesday about Wang’s frantic 36-hour stay at the U.S. consulate in Chengdu in February suggest he tried to give American diplomats information implicating Gu in Heywood’s death and demonstrating that Bo had tried to prevent an investigation into his wife’s role. 

In a startling revelation, also on Tuesday, sources close to the Chinese investigation told Reuters that Heywood had threatened to expose Gu’s plan to move large sums of money overseas after a dispute over his cut from the transaction.   

Chinese officials began stepping up their inquiry into Heywood’s death after Wang was whisked away by Beijing authorities following his visit to the U.S. consulate.

Scandal sends China's netizens into afeeding frenzy

In Britain, opposition members of Parliament (MPs) have raised questions whether the U.K. government had been too cautious or slow to raise concerns in the case because it did not want to jeopardize commercial prospects in China.

During Tuesday’s Parliament session, Foreign Secretary William Hague presented MPs with a detailed timetable of events surrounding Heywood’s death.

“We have demanded an investigation. The Chinese authorities have agreed to conduct an investigation. There’s been a further discussion of that this afternoon,” he told MPs.  “

Hague said Foreign Office officials first heard in mid-January of rumors circulating amongst British expats in China.

But it wasn’t until a month later — a day after Wang’s ill-fated visit to the U.S. consulate — that officials flagged the case with Hague and other ministers back in London.

British government under heat
Hague’s appearance in Parliament coincided with a visit to 10 Downing Street by one of China’s top ministers, Li Changchun.

Li — the propaganda chief and a member of the all-powerful Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee — held a meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron, who raised the matter with him.

In an abrupt departure from the earlier muted approach, Cameron has promised to demand more from the Chinese on Heywood’s death, which has become tabloid fodder over here.  Cameron also read the riot act to his intelligence chiefs.

The Foreign Office has declined to comment further on Li’s meeting or the situation regarding Heywood.

The story, in the meantime, continues to rivet the public in Britain and in China.

“I guess it’s just a good story for normal people,” said an overseas Chinese national now living in London who only wanted to be identified as Lucy.  “Murder, high-powered officials, it’s got all the ingredients.”

HONG KONG & SHENZHEN, China – Anchor babies. Birth tourism. Cross-border births.

It’s a growing global phenomenon driven by Chinese with wherewithal and wealth.  Chinese from a China that – even as it continues to grow and open up to the rest of the world – still faces a restrictive enough present and an uncertain enough future that they choose to give birth outside of China.

Some do it to avoid the one-child policy.  Many do so for the benefits the child will receive as a citizen of the country into which it’s born: free or better education, the freedom to travel, good social services, a safe haven.

The United States is overwhelmingly the most popular destination for wealthy Chinese, a phenomenon covered by NBC News.

But a close second is Hong Kong, the tiny former British colony of 7 million people.

Since its return to Beijing’s oversight  in 1997, and as China has made it easier for its people to travel, tens of thousands of mainlanders regularly head over the border to book up maternity wards at Hong Kong’s good quality and affordable public hospitals.

Of the 88,000 births in Hong Kong in 2010, roughly 45 percent were delivered by mainland Chinese women, according to Hong Kong's government.

The growing number of cross-border births isn’t just straining health care resources and the local population’s goodwill.  It’s also helped to provoke an identity crisis that 15 years after the handover has alienated local residents from their northern neighbors.

A business catering to pregnant mainlanders
For four years, Gordon Li has been running a business from Shenzhen, southern China, arranging travel to Hong Kong for pregnant mainland Chinese women. 

Adrienne Mong/File

Many Hong Kong locals believe their quality of life is being eroded by mainland China---including the air.

(*Gordon Li is not his real name; he did not want to divulge his identity.  Just last week, another agent from mainland China pleaded guilty to breaching Hong Kong immigration laws for helping mainland women give birth in the city.  It was Hong Kong’s first prosecution of its kind and, given the current mood, may not be the last.)

“We work like a travel agency [and] the fee depends on the client –whether they want to stay in a luxury hotel or a small hotel, etc.,” said Li, who charges his clients between a few thousand yuan and 20,000 yuan ($3,200) to navigate the system.  Most of his customers are from the mainland’s wealthiest regions like Guangdong, Zhejiang, Beijing, and Shanghai.

Li estimates that he has helped at least a few hundred mainland women to have babies in Hong Kong.  “Last year was the most,” he said. 

His early clients were trying to get around the mainland’s strict one-child policy, but today most of his new customers travel to Hong Kong because, Li says, there are “a lot of conveniences.”

The public health system in freewheeling capitalist Hong Kong is considered better and safer than it is in its communist neighbor.  Maternal mortality ratio statistics collected by organizations like the World Health Organization support Hong Kong’s reputation for good quality health care for mothers and newborn babies.

Bo Gu

Every day, more than 10,000 students who live in mainland China cross the border to go to school in Hong Kong.

Other benefits for newborns include being automatically eligible for “the right of abode” in Hong Kong, which means becoming permanent residents.  Which in turn means unfettered access to free public education considered superior to that in the mainland; political freedoms; and ease of travel anywhere in the world.

And they are entitled to all of this without giving up their China citizenship.

In fact, more than 10,000 mainland Chinese children who were born in Hong Kong, but live in China, go across the border every day to attend school in the former British colony.

Hong Kong is fed up
Huang Lijuan is a 27-year-old kindergarten teacher from Guangdong Province.  She and her husband, Tsing Ho Nan, a 32-year-old engineer from Hong Kong, met in Shenzhen and moved to Hong Kong after getting married.

“I’m three months pregnant, and the due date is August 5,” Huang told NBC News one afternoon in a community center in Tsuen Wan, Hong Kong.  “But I haven’t been able to book a hospital bed in a maternity ward.  All of the public hospitals are fully booked.”

“There are 80 to 100 [mainland women married to Hong Kong men living here] who are pregnant, but they failed to book any hospitals to deliver their babies,” said Koon Wing Tsang, an organizer with the Mainland-Hong Kong Families Rights Association.  Like Huang, they are all casualties of recent restrictions on non-local women.

Under popular pressure, the Health Authority (HA) in Hong Kong has instituted quotas for non-local residents.  Currently, only 3,400 births by non-local women are permitted at public hospitals this year – down from 10,000 in 2011.  Private hospitals are allowed 31,000 births by non-local women.

“The government and the HA are committed to ensuring that local pregnant women will be given priority in the use of the services over non-Hong Kong residents (non-eligible persons, NEPs),” said a Health Authority spokesman in a written response to NBC News requests for an interview.

But even the new quotas may not be enough.  As Huang found out, all the maternity wards in Hong Kong’s public hospitals – and many private clinics – are fully booked until September. 

Moreover, the quotas don’t prevent mainland women from using the emergency wards as a last resort.  More than 1,600 such births last year were delivered in Hong Kong’s emergency rooms – an unnecessary medical risk since such wards are not equipped or staffed properly for deliveries.

Some Hong Kong government officials have raised the possibility of an outright ban on mainland Chinese women giving birth in the city, but critics have argued enforcement is problematic. 

Others have suggested ending the practice of granting automatic permanent residency status to babies born to non-local parents.  To do so, according to legal experts as well as Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Donald Tsang, would mean having to reinterpret the Basic Law – the territory’s mini-constitution. 

Any such action would require consultations with Beijing, which could prove to be a political minefield for Hong Kong, which prides itself on its Western-style democratic values.

China to ban names that signal 'orphan' status

'Locusts' & 'running dogs'
Adding fuel to the fire is a recent series of tense confrontations between local and mainland residents.

Last month, Hong Kong citizens were outraged over a report that a Dolce & Gabbana boutique had banned local shoppers from taking photographs of its shop, but allowed mainland Chinese tourists and other visitors to snap away.  A Facebook campaign days later galvanized more than a thousand people to protest outside the shop, forcing it to shut early.

Barely a week later, a heated dispute broke out on the Hong Kong subway when a mainland Chinese child was asked to stop eating on the train – a practice banned in the territory.  The argument between locals and mainlanders was captured by a cell phone camera, and the video went viral on the Internet.

Tensions were further inflamed by comments from a Peking University professor, who when shown the video of the subway dispute, called the territory’s residents “running dogs of the British imperialists.”

This month, a group of concerned Hong Kong citizens bought a full-page ad in a popular mainstream Chinese-language Hong Kong daily newspaper that called mainland visitors “locusts.”  The term refers to the large numbers overrunning the territory to consume all its resources.

A “locust” song even made the rounds on the Internet, with spiteful lyrics poking fun at mainland Chinese, and inspiring at least one group of young Hong Kong men to roam around singing the song at visiting mainland Chinese.

An identity crisis
“I think the real reason that Hong Kong people are upset is because they feel helpless politically,” said Wen Yunchao, a mainland blogger and activist now living in the territory.  “The rules they believe in are being broken by all these mainland visitors, and yet they still have to rely on China economically.”

Dr. Elaine Chan at the Center of Civil Society and Governance at Hong Kong University agrees the tension is “a manifestation of something deeper.”

“Hong Kong people do not have a very positive view of mainlanders,” she said.  “Not just because they are buying properties and not just because they are buying all the luxury goods.  But also because of how they carry themselves.”

Both Wen and Chan argue there’s an underlying sensitivity to and awareness of the fact that Hong Kong is bound up with China –culturally, historically, politically, and economically – and yet there remains a gap in fundamental values between the two: in terms of the rule of law or basic civility.  That tension makes some people in the territory uncomfortable.

For now, Beijing has remained silent at least on the cross-border births issue, although authorities in neighboring Guangdong province have promised to find a solution.

But another hot-button topic may soon eclipse that of birth tourism.  The main topic of conversation last week was a government proposal to open up the border to mainland Chinese drivers and their vehicles.  Concern over road safety issues is so great in Hong Kong that an online petition has already gathered 7,000 signatures.

With additional reporting by Bo Gu.

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.

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.”

Adrienne Mong

Wenzy Duan (centre) and her mother, Julia Yin, go over college choices with a ThinkTank Learning consultant in Beijing.

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.

Adrienne Mong

The parents of Dolly Luo believe an American college education will improve their daughter's future career prospects.

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.” 

Adrienne Mong

All was quiet on the Demilitarized Zone on the Korean Peninsula on the Kim Jong Il's state funeral took place.

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. 

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."

Adrienne Mong

The streets of Seoul suggested it was business as usual in South Korea as Kim Jong Il's state funeral was held.

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

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."

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

From the China Daily website

A grid image posted on the China Daily newspaper showing the dramatic changes in air quality in Beijing in the past four days.

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.

Post by @TomVandeWeghe

An image of an iPhone app circulating on Twitter this afternoon, showing the @BeijingAir monitor out of commission.

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.

YINGJING, SICHUAN—The panda was always one of my favorite animals.

Until I found myself slipping and sliding down a steep muddy mountain slope in southwestern Sichuan, looking for panda poop.

To be precise, someone else was searching. 

My colleagues and I were just attempting to keep up with him on what was easily one of the more physically grueling NBC News assignments we’d all been on in years.

Li Guiren, a fleet-footed 36-year old Sichuan native who works at the Chinese Forestry Department, was hiking through the mud, following coordinates on his bright yellow GPS device.  He’s one of 70 “trackers” working in Sichuan to count pandas in the wild—which they do by collecting panda droppings.  (More on that in a moment.)

China kicked off its panda census last month.  It’s the fourth one since the 1970s, when they instituted the practice to keep tabs on the worldwide panda bear count every 10 years.

The wild panda is only found in China, across parts of three provinces of Sichuan, Gansu, and Shaanxi, covering 5,400 square miles.  Or the size of Connecticut.

The bears like being high up, usually somewhere between 4,000 and 11,500 square feet above sea level in mountain forests with a damp climate.

The last census revealed only 1,596 wild pandas existed with 290 pandas in captivity around the world.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

Li Guiren takes notes on the geography on a Sichuan mountain.

“About 70 to 80 percent [of all the pandas in the world] live in Sichuan,” said Huang Zhi of the Bifengxia Panda Breeding Center in Ya’an, Sichuan.  “Sichuan also has the highest number of wild pandas.”

Trackers in the field
Sichuan is also where the two-year panda census project has launched.  Smaller teams in Gansu and Shaanxi will begin working in the field next year.

Early in the morning, a group of twenty men suited up in wet-weather clothes and thin boots.  They reviewed their cartographic materials and compared notes one last time before setting off.  Each one carried the same bright yellow GPS device Li was toting.

Li, who took part in the last panda census, said new technology has had a huge impact on their work.  “We can get a lot more done more quickly,” he said, with the GPS device shaving the amount of time in the field down by about 30 percent.

Each tracker is assigned a near-vertical tract of land to explore.  On average, they cover 1.2 to 1.5 square miles a day, looking for panda droppings.  (A typical male panda roams in a territory about 3.3 square miles whereas a female confines herself to 1.8 square miles.)  Li found a pile that looked like it had been produced within the past three days, which he bagged and brought back to base camp for analysis.

“We take a sample for DNA testing,” he said as he prepared the panda waste.  “The DNA test demands fresh feces not more than four days old.  This is very fresh.”

But DNA testing isn’t foolproof so Li and his colleagues also measured the undigested bamboo scraps to help identify the pandas individually.  “We measure the width of the teeth marks,” he explained.  Each bear has an individual bite with differing teeth sizes.

Habitat challenges
While in the panda’s natural habitat, the research teams also take detailed notes of the conditions and its geology. 

“What people normally care about is the number of the pandas,” said Gu Xiaodong, a scientist with the Sichuan branch of the Wildlife Survey Conservation and Management in the Forestry Department.  “We care more about the quality of their habitat.”

With the data the trackers are collecting, the scientists will be able to analyze changes to the habitat and "draw up more effective conservation policies," continued Gu.  “For example, last time we found pandas in locations between the reserves we had established,” he said.  “So we had to set up more reserves to protect these pandas.”

Adrienne Mong

Li Guiren and other researchers measure undigested bamboo in the panda droppings to help identify each animal.

Researchers also hope to have more detailed information about the impact of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which measured 7.9 (by the U.S. Geological Survey) and devastated the famed Wolong Giant Panda Reserve Center, one of the earliest research bases set up by the Chinese government in the early 1980s. 

But humans remain the biggest threat to the survival of wild pandas.

With more than 80 million people, Sichuan is one of China’s more densely populated provinces.  In recent years, it has seen large inflows of government investment and is rapidly urbanizing.  Scientists have cited roads and high-speed railways as a major hazard encroaching on the panda’s natural habitat in the mountains.

But mining is also a problem.  The day we trudged up the mountain with Li and Gu, we passed a couple of mines—one of them lead, whose run-off cast an unhealthy gray tinge to the river.  Loud explosions went off even during our hike, unsettling us as much as the pandas.

“The place where we are doing research now, it’s always been a traffic-intensive area with a lot of human activity,” said Gu.  “The pandas here probably choose to go higher.”

But they still sometimes descend into human territory, especially if it means getting something to eat other than bamboo plants. While the giant panda's diet consists mostly of bamboo, they do have the digestive system of carnivores. 

Gu confirmed that local farmers have regularly complained about pandas raiding their livestock.  “One farmer has his goats eaten by pandas every year,” recalled Gu, who said the Forestry Department offers compensation in such instances.

Mating challenges
Mating habits are also a challenge, particularly for pandas in captivity.

Female pandas are only in heat for three days a year.  The window for conceiving is very narrow—from 12 to 24 hours during those 72 hours.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

The panda's natural habitat is a rugged landscape, but it's also being encroached by China's westward development.

Pandas in the wild don’t generally have a problem reproducing, said Huang from the breeding center.  But those in captivity usually need a bit of help—whether through artificial insemination or even the famed panda porn method.

Despite the success in breeding the cuddly animals in captivity, there’s been none so far in re-introducing fully domesticated pandas into the wild.

Nonetheless, researchers say they think breeding programs and conservation efforts have worked to keep the panda from advancing any closer to extinction.

“We really hope once the census is done, we’ll find more pandas than we found in the last census,” said Li.  “That will mean what we’ve been doing has made progress.”

And if the scientists are right, that will make at least one civilian very happy.

A man by the name of An Yanshi in Sichuan is collecting panda poop by the bucket-loads to make tea—with curative properties.

“Pandas have a very poor digestive system and only absorb about 30 percent of everything they eat,” An has been quoted as saying.  “That means their excrement is rich in fibres and nutrients.”

He plans to market the tea as the world’s most expensive—at $36,000 a poop.  A pop.  A pound.

BEIJING – As the deadline approaches for paying a whopping tax bill of $2.4 million, Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has collected nearly half that amount from supporters across China.

“I’m very surprised,” said the 54-year old Ai in his studio in northeastern Beijing.  “I never really [wanted] people to donate anything to us.”

Last Tuesday, the authorities presented the bill to his company, known as Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd, and issued a deadline of November 15.  Fake, which is registered in the name of Ai’s wife, manages the artist’s affairs.  The government is seeking the back taxes and fines based on tax evasion charges they made earlier this year against Ai during his 81-day detention in an undisclosed location.

Ai immediately turned to his apparent favorite medium of expression these days, the Internet, to solicit donations from followers. 

An unorthodox way of fundraising
While the artist said he has the means to find the money himself to pay the tax bill, he wanted to bring attention to how the government is treating him.  Ai’s family and supporters have maintained that the tax evasion charges come as retaliation for his constant attacks on the Chinese central government.

Ai has said he considers the donations a “loan” and intends to pay everyone back.  

The donations have come in many shapes and sizes.  Roughly 25,000 people have sent in donations by Alipay (a Chinese version of PayPal), money orders, and cash–wrapped around fruit or folded as paper planes thrown over the garden wall into his compound.

Eric Baculinao

Ai Weiwei gives journalists the latest tally of donations that have been streaming in since last week.

“Society should be more tolerant,” said Zhao Yangping, a retired engineer living in Beijing.  We found her leaving the studio, where she had just donated some money on behalf of relatives from overseas who wanted to show their support for Ai.  “Why should the government be so nervous?  He deserves more freedom.  The government is too harsh on him, too sensitive.”

The government maintains otherwise.

In the state-run newspaper, The Global Times, an editorial questioned whether Ai’s unorthodox response was legal, “Since he's borrowing from the public, it at least looks like illegal fund-raising.”

It also looks like people – even if still a small fraction given the size of China's population – are taking a stand in the battle between Ai and the government.  "It is obviously…about that,” Ai said.  “It’s about how people vote with very [limited] possibilities….  We use our money to vote.  It’s our ticket.”

Collateral damage?
Despite initial reports stating that he was unsure yet about whether to pay the fine and back taxes, Ai confirmed to NBC News he would do so by next Tuesday.

“I think we have to,” he said.  “If you don’t pay, then you violate another law….  And it’s not me now, they are not aiming at me.  The tax company said it’s not you.  It’s the company.  In the company, there are several people [who are] innocent.”

Nonetheless, innocent people are affected by Ai’s activism.

On the day NBC News visited Ai, a young woman was waiting to confer with him about a predicament.

Wu Hongfei, a writer-journalist whose main passion she says is singing for her rock band, Happy Avenue, had just learned a concert for a birthday party this weekend had been cancelled.

“The authorities told Yugong Yishan [a public concert venue] that they cannot hold the performance,” she said.  Managers at the club were not given any explanation, according to Wu, but she reckoned it had to do with their decision to give out sunflower seeds to ticket buyers as “a special birthday gift” from Wu to her audience.

Harmless or odd as it might seem, the gesture could be interpreted by authorities as an overt show of support for Ai. 

“Sunflower Seeds” is the name of a major installation Ai mounted late last year at the Tate Modern, a prestigious museum in London.  It was still on display in April, when the artist was detained in Beijing, and drew even more widespread attention as a result of his arrest.

Wu has already had one other concert shut down by local officials—again no reason was given although she suspects it’s because of her association with Ai.

“This is irrational.  We’re not even that close friends.  I don’t bother the government.  I don’t even understand politics,” she said.  “If I can’t perform, then what can I do?  I really love my band.”

Read more reports in Behind the Wall on Ai Weiwei

The show goes on in New York, minus detained Chinse artist

SLIDESHOW of Ai Weiwei's work

EN ROUTE BACK TO BEIJING -- We like to lament the state of Chinese television.  It's pretty awful.

But then there's Hunan TV.  With its hit reality TV shows, it's possibly the nation's most popular broadcaster and reaches millions of viewers.

And just based on this one video, one can see why.

A bunch of Chinese senior citizens doing a cover of "Bad Romance."  Yes, the one by Lady Gaga.

Some things need no words.

Adrienne Mong

Xin Xin paid $200,000 in cash for her Porsche, which NBC cameraman David Lom films.

BEIJING – Xin Xin is a 24-year-old west Beijing native who runs her own media consultancy.

In 2006, she bought a limited edition Mini Cooper GP.  Only three of them exist in China.  Two years later, with her parents’ help, she forked over $200,000 in cash for a pink Porsche Cayman.  "I like the lines of the car," she said.  "It's very pretty....  And I like changing gears so you can accelerate very quickly." 

It's extraordinary enough to hear that someone this young in a nation still making the transition from a low-income to a middle-income economy can buy a top-shelf German sports car.  (In cash! In a city with Beijing's traffic problems!)

But what's more remarkable, for retailers and advertisers, is that Xin Xin’s not the only one.  In fact, many other young Chinese women are snapping up high-performance sports cars.  (One woman named Guo Meimei was pilloried after she posted on China's Twitter-like service, Sina Weibo, photos of herself with some of her cars, including a Maserati and a Lamborghini.  At the time, she claimed to be working for the Red Cross Society of China, which triggered a flurry of Netizen speculation that she was siphoning funds, the Red Cross was corrupt, or she was the mistress of some official.)

Fiat – whose Maserati brand now counts China as its second biggest market after the U.S. – says 30 percent of its Maserati customers in the mainland are women – far greater than the percentage of women buyers in Europe or the U.S., which ranges from 2 to 5 percent.  

The number of women who buy Ferraris in China is double the global average.  About 300 models were sold in the mainland in 2010, with women accounting for 20 percent of the sales. 

"[Women] are  much more involved in China about buying the car: the look, the feel, the actual decision to buy the car," said Matthew Bennett, Asia-Pacific Director at Aston Martin. 

But they're not just, ahem, steering the decision on what family car to purchase.   

They're buying high-performance sports cars for themselves.

"The culture is very different," said Angelica Cheung, Editorial Director of Vogue China.  "A lot of women in China are very independent women....  They really made their own fortune.  They earned their own success.  And they just feel that, I can have what men have." 

Indeed.  Xin Xin, who takes her cars out regularly to a local track to race other drivers, said, "We Chinese girls not only have a heart of girls, we also have a wild heart for driving sports cars.  You can feel the charm of racing cars just like boys do." 

Which drives sports car aficionado Paolo Gasparrini, well, a little nuts.

"I am thinking of my country, Italy, you don't give your sports car to your wife, frankly speaking, not so easy, here it's easy," he said.  On a regular basis, Gasparrini sees young Chinese women driving a high-performance sports model around the streets of Shanghai. 

"You see much more here than in Europe, [where] we have a different attitude about car[s]," he continued.  "The men, we are very jealous about [our] cars....  But here it's fantastic.  It's very, very open." 

Role reversal
In fact, as president of L'Oreal China, Gasparrini thinks the average Chinese luxury consumer is very open to displaying symbols of wealth and power in ways that their European or American counterparts might be a little shy about. 

"I think that in the Chinese culture there is not a taboo" about men spending time and money on grooming products, he said.  Ten years ago, such products were virtually nonexistent in China.  Today, it's an industry worth nearly $800 million.  

"Nobody pulls your leg if you take care of your face...so little by little more and more Chinese men use [these grooming] products," said Gasparrini, whose company dominates the men's sector with its Biotherm and L'Oreal Paris lines.  In fact, 30 percent of Biotherm's overall sales come from its men's skincare products. 

They're consumed by Chinese men like Jacky Sun, an ebullient young Shanghai native who had just purchased a Biotherm skin cleanser.  "More and more of my friends like to use these things, because they think it's very important...to leave a good impression on other people," he said. 

A recent survey by the Hurun Group, a consultancy which tracks China’s wealthy elite, finds that these impressions are critical to the rich.  

“Chinese luxury consumers are in general younger, many under 40 years old….  Furthermore, they are mainly new rich, with a rather short history of luxury consumption.  Therefore, the social function of luxury goods is most important to them,” according to the GroupM Knowledge—Hurun Wealth Report 2011.

But some luxury goods also serve a practical function.   

The 'man bag'
Going back to our young Shanghai native, Sun possesses another important status accessory – the man-bag. 

"The purse?  My friend says that's a purse," laughed Sun as he held up his small shoulder bag.  "This way I can make my hands free, and it can take my wallet, my key, small stuff, so I like it....  Sometimes my friends from America will tease me that it's a purse, a woman's purse, but I still like it.  I don't care." 

As a report by the Los Angles Times put it, “Luxury leather goods makers can't believe their luck:  Both sexes in the world's most populous country adore purses.” 

“Our survey shows about thirty percent of male consumers buy bags or shoes regularly,” said Mao Mao Xun, Beauty Director at Men’s Health China.  Moreover, “Chinese men have a different view of masculinity from that in the West.” 

A random sampling of interviews with young men in central Beijing suggests the practical benefits of toting around a small handbag outweigh any Western conventions of masculinity.   

Jing, who did not want to give his full name, was toting a leather clutch during a visit to Sanlitun Village one Saturday afternoon.  It was given to him by his mother, and he raved about its functionality.  Other men said they’d rather wear a shoulder bag than have a bulky wallet and cell phone jammed into their pockets. 

“Given the commuting nature of our Chinese consumer, we find that cross-body bags, bags that hang over their body, are much more popular than they would be here in the United States,” said Victor Luis, President of Coach International Retail, which has designed special editions for the China market.  In fact, male consumers make up half of Coach’s mainland China sales of premium handbag and accessories. 

And it’s not just Coach.  All the foreign luxury brands sell well in China. 

”Bags are very discernible,” said Mao.  “You can easily tell the brand by a bag.  Many Chinese buy these products to be known, to be noticed.” 

There’s no question these young consumers get noticed.

Xin Xin, the owner of the Pink Porsche, is already working on her next purchase. 

"Lamborghini," she said confidently. 

And this time she's planning to buy it with her own cash.

BEIJING—A year ago today, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Liu Xiaobo, a writer and activist imprisoned in a northeastern Chinese prison.

Today he remains in jail for the crime of “inciting subversion of state power,” serving out an 11-year sentence.

His wife, Liu Xia, remains under unofficial house arrest in Beijing for no crime.

A slender 51-year old poet and photographer, Liu has been cut off from the rest of the world ever since it was announced her husband would be given the prize.  She has no phone or Internet access, is under constant police watch, receives the rare visit from family members, and seldom is able to venture out.

“Liu Xia…leads a lonely and oppressed life," the wife  of another dissident was quoted as saying in a profile of Liu. 

NBC News interviewed Liu Xia in September 2010, just days before her husband won the Nobel Peace Prize.  She was skeptical that the Nobel committee would award Xiaobo the prize.  She described his mood as being good and his outlook as optimistic.  She remembered having premonitions when she read his manifesto for political reform--Charter 08--knowing he would go to prison for writing it.  She talked about the possibility of traveling to Prague for an exhibition of her photographs.

She appeared composed, bright, and alert.

But that time seems a world away today.  Liu has not been seen or heard in public since.

Her treatment is, sadly, not unique.

The Chinese government has taken a hard line against dissenting voices.  Another example widely cited is Chen Guangcheng, a blind lawyer and activist who has been beaten several times and had his property destroyed or confiscated.  His wife and daughter have also been subjected to unofficial house arrest.

Again, neither the wife nor daughter are guilty of any crime.  Yet, as one commentator in China observed this week, “[T]he Chinese government are detaining a six-year old girl.”