Introduction

China's Economic Growth The World Bank

China has experienced extraordinary economic growth within recent decades that have led to the transformation of the Chinese Communist Party's policies and the daily lives of millions of China’s population. Global markets have created economic opportunities for China that have influenced the creation of policies that promote entrepreneurism among the Chinese people, abandoning the traditions of a society that is community based and collective. The sheer population of the country combined with common interests of profit and industry expansion has created fierce competition. What we have recently seen in China is a serious lack of concern for ethics and environment. Corruption amongst all levels of government and priority of economic expansion has created issues that are detrimental to the planet. In addition to a lack of enforcement and implementation of policies to reduce the source of environmental concerns, we are seeing the increase of consumer buying power as a result of the rapidly expanding economy. This has also contributed toward unsustainable practices through the increasing use of inefficient vehicles and expanding infrastructures to support the traffic.

Deng Xiaoping/the Market Reformer & Time Magazine's 1986 Person of the Year timemagazine.com

This website was developed and edited to act as a complement to a presentation that will be given to a junior high school class by a group of 3 students from Trang Ta's BIS 402 Modern China class at the University of Washington-Bothell. Included in this site is an in-depth discussion of the aforementioned issues facing the environment of China as created by the rapidly expanding economy initiated by the market reforms of Deng Xiaoping in the early 1980's. Included in this website is a presentation, with many multimedia examples, detailing the water and air pollution as well as the environmental impacts of the massive Three Gorges Dam and the desertification of the area surrounding the World famous Gobi Desert. This website can be used as a resource for junior high and high school teachers as there is an annotated bibliography plus a number of extra resources that when explored by students, the accompanying discussion questions presented can be answered in a classroom environment or as homework. Finally, in addition to the discussion questions, there are five different and varied homework assignments that can be assigned to students to complete outside of class.