Boats tour the Yangtze River near Fengdu, China, the future site of the Three Gorges Dam project. (San Jose Mercury News)

China's rapid growth and industrialization in the past two decades have brought with it a steady deterioration of the environment. Several water pollutants, including concentrations of sulfur dioxide, are at levels among the highest in the world, causing damage to human health and lost agricultural productivity estimated at $54 billion-a-year. Acid rain affects 29 percent of the country's land, while air pollution alone causes the premature death of about 250,000 people each year, according to the World Bank. Industrial waste is estimated to account for 70 percent of China's total environmental pollution.

China's limited resources and huge energy demands exacerbate the situation. In 1992, Chinese leaders authorized work on the controversial Three Gorges project – a massive dam and hydroelectric power plant on the Yangtze River. The project, which began construction in 1993, is expected to create a lake more than 400 miles long and submerge dozens of towns, hundreds of villages, and more than 200,000 acres of crop land and forests. Chinese leaders argue the project will not only tame the routine flooding of the Yangtze, but eventually provide one-ninth of the country's electricity needs by 2009, reducing the need for coal production.

"The [Three Gorges] dam will change the nature of the environment drastically." – Wang Ding, researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Hydrobiology.

Some environmental groups, however, say the project will amount to an ecological disaster, extracting huge costs from the river's ecosystem. Many opponents contend the project, which has already leveled a mountain to make way for ship locks, will change water temperatures and alter feeding patterns of particular wildlife such as China's white-bellied river dolphins – a fresh-water mammal already facing extinction in the wild. Many environmentalists say the dam could wash away the sandy beaches and islands where the dolphins feed and reproduce.

Another controversial area involves China's trade in endangered species; in particular, animal parts believed to hold medicinal and nutritional value. Some environmental groups say consumer demand from China and Taiwan for rhinoceros horns is at least partly to blame for reducing the animal's population to fewer than 10,000 in the wild. Similarly the use of tiger bones and parts in Chinese medicines has led to such excessive hunting of the big cats that they are now on the endangered species list. China has enacted legal restrictions on the trade of certain animal parts like the rhinoceros horn, but most environmental groups say it is generally not well enforced.

Recently, China has made attempts to reduce its pollution and deforestation, as well as improve its wildlife conservation efforts. The country now has a system of pollution control programs and a environmental protection network at local and national levels. From 1985 to 1994, estimated emissions of suspended particulate matter in China's waterways dropped from 13.5 million tons to 5.8 million tons, according to the World Bank. While still high, environmentalists say the numbers reflect China's serious commitment to pollution control. By the year 2000 China seeks to spend about 1 percent of its GDP on environmental protection.

– Tim Ito, washingtonpost.com staffer