Amid China's boom, pollution reaches deadly extremes
BEIJING -- No country in history has emerged as a major industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage that can take decades and big dollops of public wealth to undo.
But just as the speed and scale of China's rise as an economic power have no clear parallel in history, so its pollution problem has shattered all precedents.
Environmental degradation is now so severe, with such stark domestic and international repercussions, that pollution poses not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling Communist Party. And it is not clear that China can rein in its economic juggernaut.
Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China's leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.
Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud. Only 1 percent of the country's 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. Beijing is frantically searching for a magic formula, a meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the 2008 Olympics.
Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution; a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life.
China is choking on its own success. The economy is on a historic run, posting double-digit growth rates. But the growth derives, now more than at any time in the recent past, from a staggering expansion of heavy industry and urbanization that requires colossal inputs of energy, almost all from coal, the most readily available, and dirtiest, source.
"It is a very awkward situation for the country because our greatest achievement is also our biggest burden," said Wang Jinnan, one of China's leading environmental researchers. "There is pressure for change, but many people refuse to accept that we need a new approach so soon."
China's problem has become the world's problem. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides spewed by China's coal-fired power plants fall as acid rain on Seoul and Tokyo. Much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China, according to the Journal of Geophysical Research.
The International Energy Agency has said China could become the world's leading producer of greenhouse gases by the end of this year, and the Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency said China had already passed the milestone.
For the Communist Party, the political calculus is daunting. The country's authoritarian system is addicted to fast growth. Delivering prosperity placates the public, provides spoils for well-connected officials, and forestalls demands for political change. A major slowdown could incite social unrest, alienate business interests, and threaten the party's rule.
But pollution poses its own threat. Officials blame fetid air and water for thousands of episodes of social unrest. Healthcare costs have climbed sharply. Severe water shortages could turn more farmland into desert. And the unconstrained expansion of energy-intensive industries creates greater dependence on imported oil and dirty coal.
China's leaders are vowing to overhaul the growth-first philosophy of the Deng Xiaoping era and embrace a new model that allows for steady growth while protecting the environment.
Yet most of the government's targets for energy efficiency, as well as improving air and water quality, have gone unmet. And there are ample signs that the leadership is unwilling or unable to make fundamental changes. 
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