During the two sessions, Chinese officials have been taking questions via social media, on CCTV News pages on Chinese and global platforms. Today, it's the turn of China's environmental protection ministry. Cao Liping, deputy director of the ministry's bureau of environmental supervision, took question over the air quality data. He explained how it was measured, and why sometimes there's a difference between the official data and the data provided by other units.
"Many netizens question the credibility of data. Data quality is something that links to our credibility. And we attach great importance to it. We monitor data at different times and from different locations and different regions. And the date that we are offering is an average of the day. Some individuals and units also monitor the air with different equipment and methods. This may lead to a difference. However, we indeed found some organizations were falsifying data several years ago. So we have made great efforts to tackle this problem since 2013. We have sent many experts to inspect data collections in 96 cities of 29 provinces and regions. Once problems are found, We rectify them immediately. We also use technology to ensure quality. We now have implemented point-to-point transmission. The monitoring data from monitoring sites are now being transmitted directly to our headquarter, so that we can monitor the local situation," Cao said.