Judith Shapiro’s latest ambitious work picks up the story of modern China’s checkered relationship with the environment at approximately the point where her previous study, Mao’s War Against Nature (2001), left off. This latest book sets out to address questions of grave importance to China and to the world. The litany of challenges – poisonous water and toxic air, scarcity of water and other resources, deforestation, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity – seem nearly insurmountable, despite evidence of considerable attention from the Chinese government and from China’s public, and despite the rocket-like rise of China’s economic power and political influence in the world.
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