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Climate Change: Is China Burning its Future?

What Kind of Future? (1/14)

A Chinese boy prepares for the annual celebration of the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1. China's current growth is shaping his future. Will he get his share of the countries new wealth and power - or will he suffer from a degraded climate and nature? (Photo: Reuters)

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Climate Change: Is China Burning its Future?

Smog (2/14)

A Chinese cleaner, wearing a mask to protect herself from dense air pollution, walks along a main Beijing street. Eighty two percent of China’s energy supply comes from coal-fired power plants. China burns more coal than the United States, European Union and Japan combined. Particles from Chinese coal-fired power plants now drift all the way across the Pacific Ocean and are detectable along the West Coast of the United States, particularly in mountainous areas. (Photo: Reuters)

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Climate Change: Is China Burning its Future?

Smog II (3/14)

A thick shroud of haze lingers over China, turning the sky an opaque grey. Beijing, China's capital, is situated under the densest portion of the smog layer. The aerosol pollution can be seen blowing eastward across the Bo Hai Bay and Yellow Sea reaching as far as North and South Korea and the islands of Japan. (Photo: SeaWiFS Project, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, and ORBIMAGE)

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Climate Change: Is China Burning its Future?

Typhoon (4/14)

In August 2006, Typhoon Saomai struck eastern China. The picture shows the storm north of Taiwan. Saomai, the strongest typhoon to hit China in half a century, claimed more than hundred lives and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes. (Photo: Reuters)

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Climate Change: Is China Burning its Future?

Flooding (5/14)

Locals carry an old woman who was rescued from a collapsed house on a flooded street in Cangnan, in China's Zhejiang province. Typhoon Saomai tore into Cangnan after authorities moved more than 1 million people in the densely populated commercial province to safety. (Photo: Reuters)

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Climate Change: Is China Burning its Future?

Landslide (6/14)

Residents look at a road that collapsed due to heavy rain in Leishan county in China's southern Guizhou province in June 2006. That summer, rainstorms whipped through southern China, with floods and landslides destroying thousands of homes and forcing over 100,000 people to evacuate. (Photo: Reuters)

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Climate Change: Is China Burning its Future?

Drought (7/14)

A farmer squats on a dried-out river bed at a village in Xiangfan, in China's central Hubei province in August 2006, just one month after heavy floddings. In the summer of 2006, scorching temperatures and continuous drought across China affected over 100 million hectares of farmland, an area nearly three times the size of Germany. The Chinese government announced that the nation’s production of staples such as corn, rice, and wheat could drop by as much as 37 percent over the next 50 years as a result of climate change. (Photo: Reuters)

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Climate Change: Is China Burning its Future?

Heat Wave (8/14)

Residents stay in a tunnel to take respite from the heat in southwest China's Chongqing municipality in September 2006. According to the Chinese News agency Xinhua, the drought caused losses of more than 800 million dollars. It was the hottest summer since 1891 when meteorological records began in Chongqing, China’s largest and most populous provincial municipality with more than 30 million inhabitants. (Photo: Reuters)

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Climate Change: Is China Burning its Future?

Sandstorm (9/14)

A woman covers her head with a scarf to protect herself from a major sand storm which turned the sky amber and greatly reduced visibility in Beijing. Nearly one million tons of Gobi Desert sand blows into the Chinese capital each year. (Photo: Reuters)

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Climate Change: Is China Burning its Future?

Desertification (10/14)

Desertification has become an immense problem in northern and western China. Every year, land the size of Israel turns barren. Chinese farmer Feng Yongcun, 74, gazes out at a 10 km long Gobi Desert sand dune looming over his village in Longbaoshan, north of Beijing. When he was a young man, the sand dune had been six kilometers away from his village. It has advanced steadily and is now starting to swallow his corn fields. (Photo: Reuters)

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Climate Change: Is China Burning its Future?

Water Supplies (11/14)

Floating restaurants are stranded in a branch of the Yangtze River in China's Chongqing municipality in February 2007. The latest drought in southwestern China threatened the water supply of over 1.5 million people. Authorities were considering seeding clouds to make it rain. (Photo: Reuters)

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Climate Change: Is China Burning its Future?

Hydro Power (12/14)

Engineers and workers look at the stator of the first generator for right bank electricity plant at the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in China's Hubei province. China's Three Gorges dam, the world's largest hydropower project with a capacity of 22,500 MW, will be completed in 2009. China is currently planning or constructing more than a dozen other major hydropower plants. Already in 2006, the country had by far the world's most important hydropower capacity. (Photo: Reuters)

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Climate Change: Is China Burning its Future?

Wind Power (13/14)

A Chinese couple sits in front of a windpower genertor at Feng Xian in Shanghai. Thanks to rapid development during 2001-2005, China's total installed capacity of wind turbine generators has reached 1.26 million kilowatts (kW), ranking 10th in the world and third in Asia. According to the Chinese Xinhua News Agency, China has 44 wind power installations and is one of the main wind-driven power markets in the world after Europe, the United States, and India. (Photo: Reuters)

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Climate Change: Is China Burning its Future?

Solar Power (14/14)

A Chinese worker assembles a solar panel at SunOasis, a solar energy firm, in Urumqi in China's Xinjiang province. China is trying to expand the portion of energy it gets from renewable sources to tackle a growing dependence on imported oil and the dangerous smog from coal-burning power stations. The Australian entrepreneur Shi Zhengrong, CEO of Suntech, expanded his business to China after he identified it as a more promising growth market than Australia. (Photo: Reuters)

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China Climate Change Profile
Part 4: Strategy

Growth is China's number one concern. To sustain it, the country needs resources. So far, the environment has taken a backseat in China's foreign and domestic policies, but public pressure is growing for a new approach.

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