Challenge Six Agricultural Investment is Too Low Chinese investment in agriculture fell from 5.9 percent average between 1952 and 1992 to just 2.9 percent in 1994. Successful development for China requires a much higher level of investment in agriculture. China loses much land to erosion, desertification, and urbanization each year. It concentrates almost exclusively on production to the neglect of the essential areas of food processing, transportation and fresh storage. Sulfur dioxide and particular pollution levels are high in large Chinese cities.
Acid rain becomes more serious in South China each year.
Solid waste disposal problems are serious. Although the health expectancy of the Chinese people has been increasing, the number of environmental illnesses is also growing. In Beijing, the lung cancer death rate has climbed 200 percent over the last twenty years. The relation of respiratory illnesses and birth defects to the deterioration of the environment is a topic which badly needs further study. The investigators also found that in the Shenyang region birth defects are twice as frequent in areas which have polluted irrigation water as in areas where the irrigation water is clean.