Click for more debate from Times Online and the Battle for China

Last September, the deputy director of a local Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in central China led a team to investigate the illegal discharge of waste water by a pharmaceutical factory. While the director was taking a sample of the waste water, he inhaled the fumes and passed out. Later he was diagnosed as suffering from poisoning and hospitalised.

Commentators called this a "lucky" incident. If it had been a local resident, rather than an EPA official, who had passed out after going near the sewage, it would not have been considered newsworthy. Such incidents are common in many parts of China. But the fact that an official directly in charge of environmental protection was the victim this time meant there was a better chance that the polluter would be stopped.

This story gives a taste of the severity of water pollution in China. Many rivers and lakes contain so much toxin that it is not safe for humans to go near them. The government acknowledges that over 70 per cent of China's water bodies are polluted, and that 360 million people lack access to safe drinking water. Foreign researchers claim that it could be as many as 700 million Chinese who drink water that does not meet the minimum standards of purity.

Why China matters

Kerry Brown: The importance of China in solving our main global problems

BACKGROUND

• The poison infecting China

• The farce of bashing China's human rights record

• China is losing the human rights race

• How experts replaced intellectuals

Eco-imperialism is alive and well and living in the West

James Woudhuysen: The West's pleading with China to cut carbon emissions bursts with ulterior motives

Last year, a deputy environment minster said water pollution was approaching "crisis point". Only the main streams of the seven major rivers in China had tolerable levels of water quality. All their tributaries were effectively dead as a result of heavy pollution, as were 80 per cent of China's lakes.

Air pollution also threatens the lives and health of millions of Chinese. An article in the Lancet dubbed China "the air pollution capital of the world" and stated that 100 million Chinese live in cities where the air quality is routinely "very dangerous". A joint World Bank/Chinese State EPA report estimates that three quarters of a million deaths each year are caused by respiratory diseases. By the European Union's standards, only one percent of China's 560 million urban population breathe air that is safe.

Clearly, China achieved its break-neck economic growth over the past three decades only at a mammoth environmental cost. Although the problem of environmental damage is now well appreciated, and both the government and civil society are making more efforts to tackle the problem, no turning point has been reached. Pollution looks likely to get worse in China before any improvement occurs.

---

Join the Debate: Read James Woudhusyen on Eco-imperialism is alive and well in the West

---

Yiyi Lu is a research fellow at the China Policy Institute. She has just finished a Chatham House-based project called "Civil society and environmental governance in China" which was funded by the British government as an initiative of the UK-China High-level Dialogue on Sustainable Development.