Commentary

摘要

China is increasingly suffering from 'growing pains' of severe environmental challenges arising during the past decades' economic boom(Fu et al, 2007; Liu and Diamond, 2008). While this has been widely discussed, more attention and effort has been focused on the problems directly resulting from urbanization and industrialization, such as growing greenhouse gas emissions and worsening urban air and water quality. However, although China is already the world's second largest economy, huge urban-rural and east-west disparities still exist within the country, which result in poorer environmental infrastructure, looser environmental regulations, and consequently tougher environmental challenges in rural and western areas. For instance, the national average access rate to tap water and sanitation in rural areas are both only about 60%, the centralized treatment rate of rural household waste is as low as 21%, and all three indicators show significant east-west disparities (figure 1). Over recent