And, even though we may need to worry a bit about China's economic might - we should also be concerned with China's global environmental impact.

China is by a wide margin the leading importer of a cornucopia of commodities, including iron ore, steel, copper, tin, zinc, aluminum, and nickel. It is the world's biggest consumer of coal, refrigerators, grain, cell phones, fertilizer, and television sets. It not only leads the world in coal consumption, with 2.5 billion tons in 2006, but uses more than the next three highest - ranked nations - the United States, Russia, and India - combined. China uses half the world's steel and concrete and will probably construct half the world's new buildings over the next decade. So omnivorous is the Chinese appetite for imports that when the country ran short of scrap metal in early 2004, manhole covers disappeared from cities all over the world - Chicago lost 150 in a month.

Mao era's ecological devastation pales next to that of China's current industrialization. A fourth of the country is now desert. More than three-fourths of its forests have disappeared. Acid rain falls on a third of China's landmass, tainting soil, water, and food. Excessive use of groundwater has caused land to sink in at least 96 Chinese cities, producing an estimated $12.9 billion in economic losses in Shanghai alone. Each year, uncontrollable underground fires, sometimes triggered by lightning and mining accidents, consume 200 million tons of coal, contributing massively to global warming. A miasma of lead, mercury, sulfur dioxide, and other elements of coal-burning and car exhaust hovers over most Chinese cities; of the world's 20 most polluted cities, 16 are Chinese.

Four-fifths of the length of China's rivers are too polluted for fish. Half the population - 600 or 700 million people - drinks water contaminated with animal and human waste. Into Asia's longest river, the Yangtze, the nation annually dumps a billion tons of untreated sewage; some scientists fear the river will die within a few years.

China generates a third of the world's garbage, most of which goes untreated. Meanwhile, roughly 70 percent of the world's discarded computers and electronic equipment ends up in China, where it is scavenged for usable parts and then abandoned, polluting soil and groundwater with toxic metals.

Considering this impact along with the horrible environmental degradation being caused by the United States, India and Brazil, the global consequences loom heavy over more than the future inhabitants of our planet. The current generations of people across the globe may actually live to see catastrophic collapses in various ecosystems necessary to sustain the overabundance of humans, that continue to breed and spread like a virus and compound the already serious environmental problems our planet suffers.

I am sure I will have to answer for promoting another Mother Jones article, but if the above excerpts grabbed your attention, you will surely enjoy the complete article much more.

The Last Empire: China's Pollution Problem Goes Global Can the world survive China's headlong rush to emulate the American way of life?, By Jacques Leslie, December 10, 2007, Mother Jones.

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As an aside, you may also be interested in a somewhat related article from a November 2007 issue of Time. The article is a bit watered down in comparison to the MJ article above, but contains some insight into the mindset of where the economic emphasis my lie inside China's Me Generation.

The China Fantasy, the idea that China will evolve into a democracy as its middle class grows continues to underlie the U.S.'s China policy, providing the central rationale for maintaining close ties with what is, after all, an unapologetically authoritarian regime. But China's Me generation could shatter such long-held assumptions. As the chief beneficiaries of China's economic success, young professionals have more and more tied up in preserving the status quo. The last thing they want is a populist politician winning over the country's hundreds of millions of have-nots on a rural-reform, stick-it-to-the-cities agenda.

And so for China's leaders, placating the Me generation is seen as critical to ensuring the Communist Party's survival. By 2015, the number of Chinese adults under 30 is expected to swell 61%, to 500 million, equivalent to the entire population of the European Union. From issues of grave consequence to trivialities, the government has made clear that it will do whatever it takes to keep the swelling middle class happy.

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1.27.2008/ed. 1.28.2008