Families demand China's leaders take action to curb worsening air pollution

Middle class families on the mainland are hoping political leaders meeting next week in Beijing provide something money can't buy - clean air.

At first glance, Stella Zhou has it all. The 36-year-old brand manager of a foreign consumer products company in Shanghai owns a four-bedroom apartment downtown. She and her husband earn enough for Western luxuries and can afford to send their elder daughter to a top primary school as well as provide a comfortable life for their second daughter born last year.

But despite their comfortable lifestyle, like hundreds of millions of compatriots, both rich and poor, they lack clean air to breathe. It is a basic resource in most parts of the world but seems to have become a rare and precious commodity in China.

Every morning, Zhou checks the air quality with an app on her iPhone. Often the readings give her cause for anxiety. It is particular concerning for her father, who was diagnosed with lung cancer last year.

"I tell my parents not to take the children out to play if the air quality reading is bad," she sais. "If Shanghai has good [air readings] but other places such as Beijing have bad ones, I will check the direction of wind in the weather forecast and pray it does not come in from the north."

The Zhous have been using bottled water for years and the children are fed good quality formula milk from America. But she feels helpless about the polluted air, particularly about how it affects her two young children and her elderly parents.