Topics range from acid rain damage in Korea and Japan and the wider effects on climate change, to the long term impact on world food prices as China loses agricultural production capability through severe contamination of air, water and land.
Concern is by no means restricted to foreign observers.
A recent widely circulated report by an eminent Chinese professor from Qinghua University suggests that the country is losing more by way of environmental degradation than it is gaining in economic growth. The difficult challenge of how to make growth sustainable, involving as it does clean up and protection of the environment, is increasingly exercising a wide range of minds at a very senior level in the Chinese government. Prime Minister Li Peng attended the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in June 1992 and signed the global Agenda 21 document. The State Council adopted China's own Agenda 21, a white paper on 'Population Environment and Development in the Twenty-first Century', in March 1994. Together with the United Nations Development Programme this was given an international launch in July 1994 aimed at attracting foreign funds to sixty priority projects.