Before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing on 5–11 November 2014, the Chinese government imposed an emergency emissions-reduction strategy to combat the city's dense smog. To deal with its environmental problems effectively, China should build on the success of this short-term intervention by establishing collaborative regional policies and compensation systems for mitigating pollution.

Production in thousands of highly polluting factories and construction sites in Beijing and its surrounding provinces was curtailed or halted for a minimum of a week before the summit. Cars with even or odd registration numbers were banned on alternate days, cutting daily traffic by some ten million vehicles.

These measures caused a sharp drop of almost 30% in the daily average concentration of particulate matter measuring up to 2.5 micrometres (PM2.5) in Beijing and nearby provinces on 1–12 November. In the city itself, PM2.5 fell to under half the concentration for the same period in 2013 (see go.nature.com/ls8wl1; in Chinese). Blue skies appeared during the summit and remained for a week afterwards.

An ongoing study of urban and rural development and its environmental effects in the Bohai Rim region of China will help to assess the extent to which regulating such socio-economic changes could mitigate pollution (see go.nature.com/lo4jcz; in Chinese).