Reflection — China's dilemma between pursuing higher economic growth and escalating pollution due to industrialization Grace Deng Zheyun(7)

           Since China opened up at 1978, she quickly grow and evolve to how it is today. While China pursues higher economic growth, it comes with an heavy price: escalating pollution. Pollution problems are on the rise. China's air quality is quite worrying. My father told me, that out of the Top Ten Worst Air Quality Cities list, China took up 7 spots among the list! I was really so shocked. It's no wonder that a lot of Chinese are wearing mask now! As the world's largest source of of greenhouse emissions, China is responsible for a third of the planet's greenhouse gas output. According to the World Bank in 2007, 16 of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in China. This shows that the people living in those 7 cities are going through hazy days everyday. This haze would surely affect their health gradually, and it is even worse for those who have respiratory illnesses.

            (Wearing mask... Has it now become a trend in China...?)

             Although I understand that China have to industrialize in order to catch up with the rest of the world, China could not disregard Chinese' health and China could not disregard how this haze will affect the tourism in China. This is a sure dilemma but I feel that China should slow down their pace of industrialization as China is now the world's leading economic. From my point of view, China is sacrificing its people's health just for it's own economical growth. It is also contributing to the global warming by releasing the large amount of pollution into the air. It's people's health should have been their top priority, even if they continued pursuing higher economical growth, yet if their people are all sick or dead, there would still be a continuous downwards trend of its economical growth as the fumes of smoke would repulse tourism and due to the population decreasing at a higher rate, there would be lesser workers able to work, thus, the quality and quantity of things produced in China would decrease. Causing the economy of the country to go down. Moving forward is a must, but at the same time, China should slow down or maybe even choose to invest in researching for ways to reduce pollution, like in Germany, more and more people drive in the hybrid cars which requires hydrogen, solar or wind power. It does not need to burn fuels to move. This way, China reduces the emission of greenhouse gases which will go to the atmosphere and have enhanced greenhouse gas, which leads to global warming. China can continue or even increase the pace of industrialization, so long as the problem of escalating pollution can be solved.

                  (Requires hydrogen, or solar or wind and many more..)

               In conclusion,with China's increasing economic growth, there will be escalating pollution created by this speed and rate of industrialization. Thus I feel that the Chinese government should have in mind the welfare of the public first and weigh the pros and cons of economic development versus the health concern of public. It is important to strike a balance between these two as both are closely related. I know it is not easy to decide, but we should at least try as something lost can never be retrieved.