In the first 20 years of existence of the People's Republic of China has been virtually ignored environmental issues, although the first nature reserves were set up already back in 1956. During the Great Leap Forward on Mao asked: conquer and change nature to raw material sources. During this time, many forests cut down in order for the steel producing enough wood to have. Moreover, swamps, marshes and wetlands drained for farmland to win.

The environmental problems of the country are reminiscent of the seventies in the industrialized nations, with today's problems in China much more extensive and more pronounced are: One of the most pressing problems is the increasing pollution of rivers by discharge of unfiltered sewage. The use of river water for irrigation of fields is always problematic, because the soils are increasingly using pollutants such as cadmium and mercury are contaminated. The Chinese Embassy in Britain expressed on its website that 70% of rivers and lakes are polluted, and 300 million Chinese lack access to clean drinking water would have.Moreover, the groundwater level is falling everywhere, so that each year about 30 lakes disappear.The vegetation cover has decreased, affecting in particular the forests are affected. As a result, there is soil erosion, particularly in central China.Due to intensive treatment is arable land has been lost. In the 1990s, progressive desertification by an average of 2,460 kilometers 2 per year, if applicable.

The pollution in China has some devastating proportions. Of the 20 large cities with the world's worst air quality is 16 in China.This is due mainly to outdated coal combustion in power plants and the increase in passenger traffic. Due to the high proportion of coal as a fuel is the exposure to sulfur dioxide is very high, in thirty percent of the country's acid rain falls.In recent years, the SO2 emissions declined slightly, whereas the burden of nitrogen oxides, especially from road has risen as the number of cars in a rapid pace increasing. The pollution affects not only the cities, even in the country, the severe environmental damage. Moreover, the pollution and transnational implications. On one were the planned economy booming town and village enterprises (s) most of the time outside of any control, the other is in agriculture, the double amount of fertilizer as the world average is used. The Ministry of Agriculture estimates that the polluted acres enough food for about 65 million people could provide.

Environmental pollution is a rapidly rising incidence of lung diseases and cancer. The World Bank estimates that in China, 460,000 people per year due to air and water pollution are dying.The China Human Development Report 2002, therefore, concluded that China is at a crossroads, and for a green reform must decide. Otherwise the danger of environmental degradation, the achieved social and economic progress to impede or even back to frustrate. Due to the enormous increase in energy demand of the economy, China is now the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases and thus one of the key cause of global warming.China produces more than 33 percent of global emissions at a per-capita CO2 emissions of 4 , 6 tons in 2007,However, as a developing country under the Kyoto protocol's CO2 emissions are not curbed, although these tend to increase strongly.The first effects of climate change are also in the People's Republic already be felt: in addition to weather extremes heaped with droughts in the north, the declining crop yields result, and floods in the South - with big economic losses -, observed the shrinking of glaciers in the Tibetan highlands. This in turn causes a decrease in the water of the major rivers the Yangtze, Huanghe and Mekong.

Illegal trade in endangered animal and plant species, especially for controversial medical purposes, has many species in danger of extinction even further depleted. With numerous projects (for example, "China Green Wall") is trying to halt erosion and desertification; whether these projects were successful or not, but only in some years. There are almost 1,000 nature reserves, to over 7 percent of the territory of the People's Republic of cover, with some of these reserves in name only exist.