The municipal government of Beijing was heavily criticized for their seeming lack of action on the heavy smog that had been covering the city for days.

The city's air quality index (AQI) on Sunday at 8 a.m. was between 424 and 470 which corresponded to Level 6, the highest possible level in the monitoring station's scale which indicates hazardous pollution, according to the website of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Center.

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"Beijing municipal government, don't pretend to be blind taking advantages of the fog, " China Central Television's business channel said in its official microblog website late Saturday.  "The government should not shun its responsibility or turn a blind eye to the smog," the channel added.

By Sunday morning, the two tweets of the channel had been retweeted thousands of times by netizens.

On Friday, Beijing was already covered with heavy smog, with the city's AQI at 9 a.m. registering between 246 to 287 which corresponds to Level 5 at the monitoring stations indicating heavy pollution. The situation prompted the city's weather department to advise residents to refrain from setting off fireworks in celebrating the Lantern Festival.

In October, the municipal government of Beijing approved an emergency response system for immediate implementation that month. According to the system, the volume of traffic will be reduced by implementing an alternate driving schedule for odd and even numbered plates, and classes in schools will be suspended in the event of a red alert, which is the highest level in the system.  If an orange alert is declared, which is the second highest level, industrial plants will be required to close or reduce their production schedule.

The city adopts a four level pollution alert system using red, orange, yellow and blue where red is the highest and blue the lowest.

On Friday, the day of the Lantern Festival which people celebrate by setting off fireworks, watching lantern shows and gazing at the first full moon of the lunar new year, weather forecasters told the public that the full moon will be hardly visible due to the smoggy weather.

Despite Beijing's recognized pollution problem, the municipal government has only resorted to the emergency response system only once although its residents believe that the city's smog level warranted the initiation of the emergency response.