Chinas Economy and Environmental Issues - Term Paper Example

The Chinese economic transformation has mainly been dependent on the gross domestic product (GDP). As the development has continuously been achieved, various social conflicts have been emerging requiring urgent intervention to be solved. The first challenge is on institutional innovation; a good example is the transformation from planned to modern market economy. The second one is economic development where the success reaped should simultaneously be reflected in the social aspect. From researches conducted, the economy of china has been dependent on cash inflows, input of natural resources and cheap labor.

This has had negative effects on the economy, and society as is reflected through income inequality, environmental degradation, and social injustice. The importance of the environment to all living things cannot be neglected; in fact, the main reason for its degradation is too much exploitation and industrial activities. The industrial activities in china have been on the increase. This has constantly polluted the environment through smoke, noise, and industrial wastes. Using current technology, some of these challenges have been addressed although not effectively.

Modern machine used in china produces less noise and smoke. Despite this, the fact that the number of industries is high, the overall negative impact is high. In addition, greenhouse gasses and Sulphur-dioxide particulates from reliance on coal leads to the country receiving acid rain. The acid rains adversely affect trees at high elevation due to being exposed to acidic clouds and fog, which usually has high levels of acid than the rain. When the rain waters seeps into the soil, it dissolves some of the nutrients required by the trees for their survival.

Why the past successful export?led growth model cannot continue Past successful export-led growth ended during the1990s, when Chinese cities underwent a rapid economic transition due to the phenomenon of rapidly growing low income and poor groups. The transitions also affected the social security that had existed for a long period in relation to employment, housing, education, income, and pension. The reforms made the transitional gap continue expanding resulting to growth in the urban low income and a population with high levels of poverty.

There was a significant variance with in the scale of urban poor, in the middle of 1990, and according to a study conducted by National Bureau of Statistic, there were poverty incidences rate for urban population and household ranging from 4.4% to 3.84% in the year 1995 (Meng, 557). Moreover, the urban poverty line was setting per capita annual income of 1500, which was based on the calculations of urban absolute poverty in families and population ranging from 12.42 and 3.33 million (Chen and Fleisher, 141).

According to Development Bank, in 2002 there was a report that indicated the incidence rate of urban poverty in China in 1998 amounted to 4.7% and with the inclusion of the immigrants; the rate would reach 7.4% by 1999. The incidence of urban poverty rate in 2000 in thirteen cities was identified to be higher ten percent than higher, compared to 1995, as it was indicated by a sample survey conducted on the same cites (Chen and Fleisher, 141). The increase in the population lay off, unemployed, migrated from rural areas, dropped out, or retired is contributing to the diversification of the urban