Every day brings reports of new environmental crises in China: rivers that run black, air pollution so severe that it causes the premature deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and rivers and lakes filled with toxic chemicals, leaving millions without drinkable water. Equally alarming are reports about the rapid decline of arable land as a result of urban construction and rural industrialization, threatening China's food security and contributing to soil erosion, deforestation, and increasingly severe sand storms all the way to South Korea. Yet, while the number of reports describing at great length the many problems continues to grow exponentially, few attempt to offer feasible solutions, adequately explain the complexity of the issues, or put China's problems into a broader theoretical and empirical framework.
Anyone who is interested in understanding just how difficult the issues are, and the various attempts of the government to deal with them, should read...
