Yiyi Lu: China is now paying a heavy environmental price for its economic growth
Last September, the deputy director of a local Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in central China led a team to investigate the illegal discharge of waste water by a pharmaceutical factory. While the director was taking a sample of the waste water, he [...]

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Traditionally, analysts have cautioned that Chinese growth figures should be greeted with skepticism, but according to one school of economic thought, there may be something to the idea that the quake served as a brutal stimulus. In fact, some economists argue that despite the widespread destruction they leave behind, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions and [...]

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Winning and then staging what are sure to be spectacular and successful games will help justify the party’s continued rigid authority, and let it bask in most Chinese people’s excitement to be hosts.
But the games will also be seen as one of history’s most expensive, and well-orchestrated, coming-out parties.
After three decades of breakneck economic growth, [...]

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“If not handled properly, this issue could trigger a cascade of other crises — affecting economic growth, social progress, and even political security around the world.”
Participants at the High-Level Conference on World Food Security will discuss short-term solutions as well as new strategies to deal with the effects of global warming, growing demand for biofuels [...]

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In his new book, “The Post-American World,” Mr. Zakaria writes that America remains a politico-military superpower, but “in every other dimension — industrial, financial, educational, social, cultural — the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance.” With the rise of China, India and other emerging markets, with economic growth sweeping much of [...]

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Some of the world’s major concentrations of military power and potential hot spots are in Asia: for example on the Korean peninsula, across the Taiwan Straits and between India and Pakistan. Strong economic growth in our region is leading to the build-up of modern military forces in China and India, as well as in South [...]

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And don’t expect the government’s environmental watchdog to do much about it.
These days China’s environmental bureaucrats know how to talk the talk. They readily admit that pollution is poisoning the country’s water resources, air and soil. They acknowledge that carbon emissions are soaring. If only, they lament, the government would give them the means to [...]

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