You're saying that air-quality sensors at a location is "manual" reporting? That's your critique? What's manual about it? It sounds like an automated, objective sensor. Even if it were manual, the premise is that China is asking other nations not to release its air data. A 2012 article shows this has been happening for some time. Further, you need to elaborate what your point is (and answer "so what?") about gas measuring satellites.

> and you ignore the fact that China isn't a closed country, it's one routinely visited by internationals

How am I ignoring that? When did I say they were a closed country? Even more bizarre, you're introducing a strange claim that China isn't closed when China routinely scores terribly (worst category) on censorship and freedom of the press [0].

Here's another source [1]

> “China is making great efforts to improve the accuracy of its emissions inventories,” says Yuli Shan of Birmingham University in the U.K., who has tracked its data for years. But he notes that an assessment of China’s fossil-fuel emissions by the European Commission’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research found 23 percent more than recorded in the country’s U.N. submission for the same year.

You're welcome to provide resources that refute my argument, and I'll review.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_country#Table

[1] https://e360.yale.edu/features/undercounted-emissions-un-cli...