For all it's foibles, I'm going to go on record here to say the immigration counters in Beijing are light years faster than the ones for non-citizens I encountered on my trip home to Boston. As my wife is a Chinese passport holder, I waited in the foreign national line at Logan airport, and there we stood for a full 120 minutes as two immigration officers processed two major flights that landed that afternoon. This was on 3pm on a weekday -- it's not like it was 2 in the morning or something.
Never thought I'd be defending Chinese buraucracy ....