China Pollution

Last year, china had an environmental crisis due to rapid growth of industrialization. This had become a serious threat to China as they had to use roughly 9% of its gross national income. The air

In the article, “The Filth They Breath in China,” author, Michael Auslin, discusses the health concerns that citizens in China are forced to face, and how the country put itself in that position. China positioned the importance of its economic success, above the health of its people. The air quality has reached a state where people are urged to stay inside in order to avoid the dense smog. Also, industries have dumped an immense amount of waste into water sources, causing them to be unsafe for public use. These extreme living conditions should catch the eye of those living in the United States, in order to prevent the same from happening to them.

One of China’s best successes has in turn been one of its biggest downfalls. One of the main problems is China’s greatest success which has been its phenomenal economic growth. This is one of the main drivers of the current environmental problems that the country faces. Factories dump pollutants into the air and water. It is difficult to see the Chinese government making the significant sacrifices required to improve their environment if it means slowing down their economic growth.

Beijing is one place that has a huge problem. Their amount of pollution that they are releasing into the air is going to eventually become very toxic and no one is going to be able to survive. They are also one of the worst air quality countries in the world. There was a red alert that happened not too long ago and it finally hit a trigger that something needed to be done. “Now, in a swift policy shift, Beijing plans to issue a red alert on higher thresholds, despite government pledges to better address the toxic air” (Guo). Much of this issue is coming from the enormous amount of coal that is burned. After the alert was sent out, they had to close schools and also put strict limits on the use of cars. It would take years to even make half

After many years of ignoring the air pollution, smog ridden China has finally begun to

During the 1970’s Shenzhen was a small fishing village called Baon County and it was also a farmland in which a only few families lived. However in 1980’s, Shenzhen became the very first economic zone of China and it was renamed Shenzhen City. When Shenzhen was developing they levels hill tops and chopped down trees to make room for the factories which became a trade zone for exports. The factories in Shenzhen had no regulations the smoke coming out of the chimneys which make some air pollution. They also dumped contaminated water into the clean rivers and lakes which made the water supply polluted. Factories in Shenzhen made whatever they wanted and they did not care about the environment. They quickly ruined the environment. During the

Many of the nation’s bordering countries have been influenced in some way by China, whether culturally or politically. Although Japan lacks in natural resources, they have proven to be successful in the realm of consumer goods. In response to a high demand from an increasing modernizing population, Japanese products flooded domestic as well as foreign markets, boosting the economy. However, after years of famine, China’s industry took off and with the advantage of natural resources, demand of Chinese made products surpassed Japan. China’s booming economy has arrived with a steep environmental cost and little regulation over factory emissions has made China’s cities into some of the most polluted places on Earth.

The gross domestic product system is flawed and has many criticisms as a realistic guide to a nation's well-being. It includes the cost of damage caused by pollution as a positive factor in its calculations while excluding the lost value of depleted natural resources and unpaid costs of environmental harm. “...during 1973-85 had higher pollution intensities of GDP than those with more inward-oriented trade policies,” states Michael T. Rock, 1996, in “Pollution Intensity of GDP and Trade Policy: Can the World Bank Be Wrong?”. Furthermore, in “As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes,” by Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley (2007) states, “ Environmental degradation is now so severe, with such stark domestic and international repercussions, that pollution poses not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese public....Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution.” These lines represent major issues about air pollution affecting the people and the environment. The pollution also affects biodiversity because it releases both sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides deposit in water, on vegetation, and on soils as “acid rain”. Thereby increasing their acidity affects the ability of ecosystems to provide “ecosystem services”, such

China, one of the worlds largest industrial powers, is now facing a difficult situation. China’s industries rely largely on coal power which emits harmful gases, causing intense air pollution. The Chinese government, in fear that the country would fall in a recession, has not done much to stop these industries, so China has become the second largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world. The types of pollution created by this include air pollution and water pollution, both of which are harmful to people and wildlife. China’s problem has become the world’s problem. Nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides disgorged by coal-fired power plants fall as acid rain on Seoul and Tokyo, and much of the particulate pollution in Los

Taking into consideration China’s robust economic growth over the last 20–25 years, there is little reservation that China’s has had positive impacts on the economy. Because of the increase of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), China has saved over 400 million people from definite poverty between the years 1979 to 2005 (The State Environmental Protection Administration, 2007). Despite this economic growth in urbanization and industrialization, there have arisen major concerns about the impact this economic growth and the over population has place on the environment. Over population in China have place large demands on sustainability such as water and air pollution, land degradation, and natural resources. In this

On October 1st, 1949, the People’s Republic of China officially became a country and a player on the world stage. Since then, China has entered a new Communist era of stability, with the Reform and Opening Up policies of 1978 bringing in China’s phenomenal economic growth (Tisdell, 2008). However, with these advances in industry come a downside: air pollution. Since the early 1980s, air pollution levels have been climbing to dangerous levels. However, in 2013, the scales tipped for the worst. This certainly was not the first year that air contamination reared its ugly face, blackening Chinese cities, closing roadways and sending children to the hospital. Although difficulty breathing and poor air conditions had been a fact of life for most people in China, awareness of the problem peaked that year, causing 2013 to be remembered as the year that China’s struggle with air pollution went mainstream. Shortly after the start of the year, Beijing and surrounding regions were hit by pollution of unimaginable levels. At one point, in the middle of January, the Air Quality Index level in Beijing peaked as high as 993, far beyond levels health officials deem extremely dangerous. For comparison, on the same day in Miami, the AQI was 11 (Xinhua, 2013). As this air pollution issue continues to develop, it is vital that the Chinese put an end to this air contamination because of the health issues, economic issues, and international relation issues.

“Air pollution is defined as any substances absorb into atmosphere, and these substances harm the living things and environment” (Dictionary). As dictionary mentioned, during development of the Beijing for 10 years, air has been contaminated by emission of gases and smog from industrial factories whose number has been increasing. A number of particles and dusts damage to people’s health and their life style. People are always concerning about daily concentration of particles. Even though they struggle with defend their health against air pollution, polluted particles would give residences in Beijing fatal effect for people’s health. In Real-time Air Quality Index (AQI), we can compare Beijing to another countries using numerical data. This city is one of the most polluted city in the world. According to the article, “China 's massive pollution problem”, The Week, Wagstaff states that the air in Beijing is too dense with particles to watch the forest fire”(Wagstaff).

China is one of the countries with the poorest air quality. Moreover, Eastern China has an average air quality index (AQI) of 180, and some locations like Jiangbei, Songyuan have an AQI rating of over 500 (World Air Quality, 2017). Typically, on the AQI, a rating of above 150 is unhealthy, where individuals may experience mild to serious health effects from poor air quality (World Air Quality, 2017). Additionally, an AQI of above 200 is considered hazardous, which leads to the entire population experiencing sever health effects (World Air Quality, 2017). In fact, China’s poor air quality directly causes 1.6 million deaths a year, which equates to 4000 deaths per day (Ramsey, 2015).

In last twenty years, China has grown into a dominant supplier of manufactured exports around the globe. Although, it increases the interest of rural Chinese manufacturers to get settle in urban areas. It results in an escalation in demand for electricity that is met via burning coal and use of other fossil fuels because it is the cheapest way to meet the burgeoning need of electricity at the lowest price. Hence, it increases the air pollution by the emission of green gases like Carbon dioxide (CO2) in China (You & Xu, 2010, p. 4471). The environment has to face the tragic significant of increased economy of China. The Ministry of Environment Protection of China has proclaimed that the industrial productions, coal burning and the dust from construction sites causes the 80-90% of the pollution in China (You & Xu, 2010, p. 4473). This data is collected from the sources analyzed from the nine different cities of China. The key element of air pollution is the excess coal consumption in Shijiazhuang and Nanjing. In winter, eastern parts of China are affected by a hazardous haze. This dust-haze is a cumulative outcome of the natural factors and economic factors. The coal-fired power plants, factories, and vehicles cause the dust-haze. The crude from oil giants is also the cause of decreased quality of air and water. The rapid development of China with

In Brian Tilt’s book, The Struggle for Sustainability in Rural China: Environmental Values and Civil Society, he addresses the topic of attitudes and issues associated with sustainable development in China. Based on the contents of this work, sustainable development refers to preserving nature, people’s way of life and their community. The majority of this book is focused on the effects of pollution on the environment and how to affects people’s ability to live a sustainable lifestyle by these standards. This book addresses two main assumptions that tend to be made when considering why China has had difficulties with reducing their level of pollution. The first assumption is that people in China do not care about pollution because they are too focused on the need for economic development. The second assumption is that even if Chinese citizens did care about pollution, they would not be able to prevent it due to powerful central government that makes economic growth its top priority.This work disproves parts of these assumptions by showing that people do care about pollution and that they have taken some actions to try and change the current situation.