Two days after the curtain fell on this year’s annual meetings of China’s legislature and its top political advisory body, the country’s top environmental official traveled through a blanket of smog that marred much of the event to the city of Tangshan about 150 kilometers away. Huang Runqiu, head of China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, was a man on a mission, namely, to inspect the situation in a city on Beijing’s doorstep thought to be a major culprit behind the smog wave.