From http://xiaodongpeople.blogspot.com/2...or-planet.html

Revolutionary leader Mao Zedong spoke of "dominating nature" and
during the Great Leap Forward (1958-1959) he ordered the construction
of numerous factories. In an attempt to overtake Britain as an
industrial power, the Chinese were instructed to build mini blast
furnaces across the entire land. The absurd project failed, but the
environmental destruction is still visible. To heat the steel furnaces
China chopped down an estimated ten percent of its forests.

Can the environment withstand China's growing economic might? As one
of the planet's worst polluters , Beijing's ecological sins are
creating problems on a global scale. Many countries are now feeling
the consequences.

The cloud of dirt was hard to make out from the ground, but at an
altitude of 10,000 meters (32,808 feet), the scientists could see the
gigantic mass of ozone, dust and soot with the naked eye. In a
specially outfitted aircraft taking off from Munich airport, they
surveyed a brownish mixture stretching from Germany all the way to the
Mediterranean Sea.

These kinds of clouds float above Europe for most of the year and
they've traveled far to get there. By analyzing the makeup of
particles in the cloud, European scientists were able to identify its
origin. "There was a whole bunch from China in there," says Andreas
Stohl, a 38-year-old from the Norwegian Institute for Air Research.



The country is home to 16 of the world's 20 dirtiest cities. The
inhabitants of every third metropolis are forced to breathe polluted
air, causing the deaths of an estimated 400,000 Chinese each year.
Half of China's 696 cities and counties suffer from acid rain. Two-
thirds of its major rivers and lakes are cesspools and more than 340
million people do not have access to clean drinking water. The Yangtze
River, once China's proud artery of life, is biologically dead for
long stretches. Many other rivers flow with blackened water and along
their banks there are the notorious "cancer villages" where many
people die early.

Of 661 Chinese cities, 278 did not have a sewage treatment plant at
the end of 2005. But wealthy polluters can often pay any fines
incurred with petty cash.

China is a big country, a future superpower. Its leaders, accountable
only to themselves, don't care for economic or environmental advice.
They set their own path.

But each year, each month, almost every week, China experiences some
sort of major environmental catastrophe. The mess spreads across the
land, in its waterways and the air. And far too often, the rest of the
world gets sprinkled with some of it too.