I was just in Beijing last week. The air was indeed considerably cleaner; and so too were the streets. However, it was just as unpleasant for me as before, perhaps more so, because the atmosphere felt like the edge of war, or something to that extent:

* At least two security checks between the street and the general gathering area in Beijing-South Rail Station. (In rail stations of other cities, it was still one checkpoint.)
* Maps showing up in even innocuous lifestyle magazines depicting China's boundaries with a lot of dotted lines in the South China Sea.
* Stores and businesses named "Diaoyutai" have cropped up.
* Walk around the streets in the morning, you can often hear military-style wake-up drills from both civilian and military organizations.
* Walk the streets some more, and the casual conversations you hear invariably include the term "Riben-ren" (the Japanese).
* I won't mention the "Japanese Visitors Get Out Of My Store" signs (well, I just did, but...), as they seem to be more prevalent in the Lower Yangtze, inversely proportional to distance from Nanjing.
* Watch TV in the evening, and it's war movies, war miniseries, war documentaries, and military news on channel after channel.

None of these were entirely new, but I thought that the tensions were more amplified this time around.

I'll add by saying that, in the last two years (and including this recent trip), in Beijing as well as in other Chinese cities, I have had more than a handful of conversations in which the Chinese person I talked to said this to me, (paraphrasing) "I'm trying to make as much money as I can, so that I can move to America as fast as I can." Those, the immigration lawyer ads in the back of Chinese inflight magazines, and the glossy brochure I found in my hotel room selling EB-5 immigration, tell another story about life in China, IMO.

Perhaps expats and Westerners in general have a more pleasant view of Beijing, because they know they have a real home someplace else?