To smoke or not to smoke? That remains a question at the annual sessions of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a forum of China's elites.

On Sunday afternoon at the gate of the Great Hall of the People, where the CPPCC annual session opened, I saw more than 10 CPPCC members in succession smoking.

Swirling smoke occasionally blurred the entrance into the great building where, ironically, China's top legislature approved the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2005.