China’s Pollution From U.S. Exports: Takes Two to Tango

Forty-plus years as the world’s factory, China’s manufacturing sector has fueled its economy and growing wealth, at a heavy environmental cost. The combination of weak pollution regulations in China and demand for cheap goods from western companies and consumers has left Chinese citizens in an increasingly polluted environment. Nature magazine reported in 2017 that more than 100,000 people in China die every year as a result of noxious emissions caused by manufacturing products for export. To comment on the question if manufacturing products for the west is compromising environmental health in China, the Environmental Law Institute invited a quartet of authors to write Op-Ed pieces. Read from our very own Jennifer Turner, the Director of the China Environment Forum, on how she finds both “dancers” in the toxic export and consumer tango dance as partially responsible. Her Op-Ed was published in the September issue of the Environmental Law Institute’s Environmental Forum.