Impact of China's Growth

Water Pollution
1. About one third of the industrial waste water and more than 90 percent of household sewage in China is released into rivers and lakes without being treated.
  1. Nearly 80 percent of China's cities (278 of them) have no sewage treatment facilities and few have plans to build any and underground water supplies in 90 percent of the cites are contaminated.
  2. In summer of 2011, the China government reported 43 percent of state-monitored rivers are so polluted, they're unsuitable for human contact.
    1. China has some of the world's worst water pollution. All of China's lakes and rivers are polluted to some degree. According to a Chinese government report, 70 percent of rivers, lakes and waterways are seriously polluted, many so seriously they have no fish,
    2. The Qingshui River, a tributary of the Huai has turned black with trails of yellow foam from pollution from small mines that have opened up to meet the demand for magnesium, molybdenum and vanadium used in the booming steel industry.
    3. By one estimate one sixth of China’s population is threatened by seriously polluted water.
Ground Pollution
1. A two year government survey involving 570,000 people found that farmers’ fields produced more water contamination than factories.
  1. China’s agricultural sector is massive and massively-dependent on artificial inputs such as fertiliser. A report by Greenpeace in 2010 stated that China consumed 35 percent of the world’s nitrogen fertiliser
2. Because of China’s need to generate as much food and other resources from its land as possible, thousands of farms are near mines, chemical plants and other heavy industries.
3. Government survey found traces of toxic metals that had been present for at least one century and pesticides banned in the 1950s in soil
  1. The local government of Xinqiao is said to have passed out compensations of polluted rice for the past 20 years
Air Pollution
1. Chinese scientists have warned that the country's toxic air pollution is now so bad that it resembles a nuclear winter, slowing photosynthesis in plants – and potentially wreaking havoc on the country's food supply.
  1. China’s smog-filled cities are ringed with heavy industry, metal smelters, and coal-fired power plants, all critical to keeping the fast-growing economy going even as they spew tons of carbon, metals, gases, and soot into the air.
2. Coal is the number once source of air pollution in China. China gets 80 percent of electricity and 70 percent its total energy from coal, much of it polluting high-sulphur coal. Around six million tons of coal is burned everyday to power factories, heat homes and cook meals.
  1. Expanding car ownership, heavy traffic and low-grade gasoline have made cars a leading contributor to the air pollution problem in Chinese cities.
3. China's environmental protection ministry published a report in November 2010 which showed that about a third of 113 cities surveyed failed to meet national air standards last year. According to the World Bank 16 of the world’s 20 cities with the worst air are in China
People

Next up

Impact of China's Growth

Description

Resource summary

Media attachments

Similar

	Created by Daniel Weatherhe about 10 years ago