Thomas Friedman in his “the World is Flat” labeled China as the manufacture of the world. China is the largest exporter of clothes, toys, small appliances, and other low profit products. The foreign investment, from mostly Hongkong and Taiwan investment in the early stage to the recent fortune 500 companies, has fueled the Chinese economic development. The explosive expanding of domestic consumption push the development even further, with a steady economic growth rate of 9% for more than ten years.

The downside of the fast economic growth is the high pollution. In a recent editorial in the Lancet, the air pollution in China was estimated to cause over 400,000 premature deaths annually. Beijing has been called the most polluted capital. One of every three days in Beijing is smoggy. The air quality in Beijing is often labeled as “dangerous to your health.”

Beijing is not alone in this black list. 16 out of 20 most polluted cities in the world are in China, which also includes Shanghai, Chongqing, Shenyang, and Guangzhou. All of them are modernized cities in China.

Air pollution can be traced to the low efficient factories, increasing number of motorized vehicles, and expanding urbanization. For this, the government shoulders the largest responsibilities. Yes, sometimes dictatorship may be advantageous in changing the situation. For example, most chemical factories once situated in the urban areas were forced to move out of Shanghai without careful evaluation of the cost and benefits of workers. It significantly reduced the air pollution instantly.

However, the authoritative administration doesn’t always work the way we want. Corruption is pervasive in China. For example, in the earlier 1990s, a new type of motorized bicycle was very popular in Shanghai. It was not powered by electricity but by gasoline. It was essentially a downgraded motorcycle. The problem of this new motor-bicycle was that the engine was very gasoline-inefficient. Every moving motor-bicycle would leave a line of visible and smelly exhaustive smog behind. The noise was also intolerable. It was obvious that the motor-bicycles were heavy air pollution source, but it was well known that the niece of the party secretary started the motor-bicycle business. Only after the city administration changed was the motor-bicycle prohibited on the street.

Even without corruption, the focus of administration can lead to ecological disaster. The auto-industry is an example. It may be true that automobile is the pivotal industry for Chinese economics, but the low tech automobiles are killers to Chinese environment. Chinese cars lag more than twenty years after the Japanese and even US cars. The exhaustion standard in Chinese cars is the EU standard during early 1990s. It not the worst, more and more families now own cars. These junk cars emit tons and tons exhaustions every day. No wonder that the air quality is degrading, let alone driving the oil price world wide.

Air pollution is one big monster, and water pollution is another. More and more heavy polluting factories are moving from cities to rural areas. There is no strict regulation on the water pollution caused by the factories. Companies just pay a nominal fine to the local government instead of investing on reduction pollution. Under the name of economic development, nobody dares to drive these monsters out. As a result, majority of rivers in my hometown are undrinkable. And more and more villages are labeled as “cancer village.”

Deforestation and soil erosion are other major concerns in China too. With the expanding urbanization, more and more arable lands have been converted to city areas. The growing population also demands more lands for cultivation. Mountains are deforested and lands are over cultivated. In the mind of most peasants, there is no word called “rotating cultivation.”

Sustainable development is not an easy task. But hopes do exist. The new Chinese government has finally paid their attentions to environment. Although some polices are not well tested before issuing, the effects are generally optimistic. It is now forbidden to cut trees or cultivate in protected mountains, and the number of protected mountains is increasing. The rules to regulate pollutions are further detailed and the surveillance system is forming. Many places can see green land and clean water again.

In addition, more and more non-government organizations focus on the environmental issues. Although most of these organizations are not professional enough to do scientific research, Chinese government responds it by creating a new government agency—the environment protection agency. Although it is hard to say it has major impact on governmental decisions till now, at least it has organized several healthy debates on environmental issues (unfortunately some discussions are misleading).

But one critical problem persists. China is a big country. A number of 1.3 billion is beyond most people’s imagination. Any small social movement, for example, automobile consumption which is mostly restricted in rich families, can result an astronomic number of cars running on the street. Relaxing the residency law has liberated millions of peasants from their lands, but has pushed many cities to the brink of population explosion. China is just too big.

Furthermore, some critics have already raised concerns that China may shift the environmental burden to other countries. For example, although China has reduced the wood production domestically, it increases the wood import from the Southeast Asia. The higher oil price is also partly driven by the high demand from China.

The ultimate solution, it appears, is China should change the economic paradigm. Economic development by no means is highly polluting industry and out-of-date techniques. The environmental cost should be considered when evaluating any economic development. This, however, has a long way to go.