China's Dilemma

China's Dilemma between pursuing higher economic growth and escalting pollution

China has achieved miraculous economic growth over the past 30 years to become the world's second largest single-country economy. However, while doing so, it has caused a series of environmental problems.Economic growth in China is heavily invested in the development of manufacturing and heavy industries and energy consumption is thus growing rapidly. Unfortunately, this rapid increase in energy consumption causes more carbonemission, resulting in the rise in pollution and carbon emissions and is adding to environmental harm on a global scale and having a tremendous impact on ecological systems. On the other hand, China's economic growth is rapidly growing and its beneficial for them. In my opinion, China should consider the welfare of the people before carrying out any economic plans and should prioritise the people's health. By rapidly producing goods, carbon dioxide and harmful gases are being produced.  This fastens the rate of global warming and will not affect only China but the entire world. So what if they can earn loads of money. It will still be used for medical fees when the air pollution starts affecting them. Cutting down on the carbon emmision rate is benefical for the people but building more factories increases their economic growth. Both situations are beneficial and thus China is in a dilemma. However, China's annual carbon emission is already the top and is 26.43% of the whole world's carbon dioxide emission are from them. I strongly think that they should stop polluting the environment and not put the whole world at risk.

China's Air Pollution


 
Satellite Image of China( The gray part is pollution)


 ~Keefe(25)