A growing economy has increased incomes, reduced poverty, and improved health. But the same unbridled growth that has lifted millions out of poverty has also damaged the environment. China has made considerable progress over the last decade in curbing the environmental damages associated with rapid growth. New laws have established comprehensive regulations for the environment, the government has invested an increasing amount of resources in protecting air and water, and economic reforms have reduced the energy intensity of the economy at a pace faster than the industrialized countries. Ambient concentrations for most pollutants, though still unacceptably high, have held constant or risen only slightly despite enormous increases in output.
Chinese leaders recognize that much remains to be done.
Indoor air pollution, primarily from burning coal and biomass for cooking and heating, causes an estimated 111,000 premature deaths each year. Water pollution, a major focal point of recent Chinese policy, has contaminated 52 of 135 monitored urban river sections. Such river sections do not even meet the lowest standards necessary for irrigation water, rendering them mere waste sinks. Access to future safe drinking water supplies is threatened for tens of millions of people. Acid rain in the high sulfur coal regions of south and southwest China has the potential for damaging 10 percent of the land area, and may have already reduced crop and forestry productivity by an average of 3 percent.