Yeah, I live in Japan, roughly 3000km from China, but we also have to deal with China's pollution.

Although not that common, we sometimes get an alert with the weather report that the levels of PM 2.5 particulate matter (overwhelmingly blown over from China) are exceeding government safety standards, and that we may want to consider keeping kids indoors.

I remember we had similar 'smog alerts' a few days a year when I was a little kid in Los Angeles in wthe 1980s, and we couldn't go out to recess. But I think that's like what we are getting here in Japan, at a great distance separated by ocean -- nothing compared to what the Chinese people in Shanghai and Beijing are suffering.

There's a big "movement" by CCP to control this thing. It's mentioned in major party conferences. I heard there's going to be 10 Billion RMB poured into this, and pollution would be considered as evaluation parameter for "party leaders".

However I seriously doubt most of the money will end up in vein or simply stolen.

So "enforcement" is to happen but I have little trust in them.

Was it possible for you to breathe the air in the surrounding areas? (Lantau, Macau, etc)

Last time I was back in April of this year, Lantau was a little better but realistically still not good enough to consider living there, much less bringing up kids. I ended up feeling out of breath crossing the road.

I haven't been back to Macau since I was a kid though, so it looks very different now (Thanks to Mr Ho.)

My grandfather grew up in HK too. He passed away last summer, struck down by a rather horrible respiratory based cancer. However, I'm wary of too much confirmation bias in attributing that to the pollution too. It'll be interesting to see what the respiratory disease numbers are like in the coming decades.

Thanks for the info. My condolences for your home land and family.