Economy or health: Environmental challenges in rapid developing China and beyond

摘要

China's rapid urbanization in the past four decades constitutes one of the greatest transformations worldwide in the past half-century. The process has converted an impoverished rural country to a largely urban, rapidly developing one, with over 60% of the population now living in urban areas (NBS, 2020). This unprecedented economic metamorphosis has brought a very large population out of extreme poverty, contributing to the global poverty reduction. The per capita income in China increased from USD 468 in 1980 to USD 9780 in 2018 (Zhao, 2019) and the average life expectancy increased from 68 in 1981 to 77 years in 2018 (Zhang, 2019). However, this development has been achieved at a huge cost to the environment, with widespread ecological degradbdh-nation and environmental pollution. Currently, the government reports that China's rivers are under extraordinary threats from rampant deterioration. Rapid industrialization has led to unprecedented transformation of the environment. River fragmentation and pollution is threatening thousands of species whose survival depends on river water including the capacity for human settlements. Like the Pearl River, the Yangtze, the world's third longest river, is labeled unfit for human consumption and habitation. There are a number of documented cancer villages that the government attributes to multiple sources of pollution from various manufacturing facilities in the downstream areas. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-018-3758-4 With new national guidelines for air, water and soil pollution in place over the past few years, the nation has set ambitious goals to reduce pollution substantially within the decade.