which is a cheap way to import water, too.
China doesn't have enough water, and paving over land for factories that make more junk further limits the amount of arable land. The rain forests are the lungs of the planet, and now they have to feed a huge population that can't feed itself.
Many Chinese do not trust the safety of their food supply. Three hundred million (a number that is about the same as the U.S. population) gets food poisoning each year.
The coal plants that are being built at a rate of one every week further compromise land. I read that ten percent of the land in China is polluted by lead, which is a byproduct of coal plants.
Los Angeles gets about a quarter of its smog from China. It's one world, folks. Buy things that you need that are made locally. Read the labels. If the food item I am buying at a store that sells frozen vegetables from China doesn't list a country of origin, I don't buy it. I did get fooled by peanuts that sneak through Canada and labeled "organic" and "manufactured in Canada." Beware of peanuts of unknown origin.
http://ffas.usda.gov/itp/wto/texas/hunter.html "China is now the largest producer of peanuts in the world, and while only a small quantity of their peanuts can enter the U.S. annually, instead they enter through other countries such as Canada. In countries like Canada, these Chinese peanuts are then made into butter and/or paste, as was mentioned earlier, and are entering the U.S. in expanding quantities. China has also recently become a major world supplier in a market that has become driven by cash needs, with little or no consideration for quality or market price. The U.S. peanut-producing industry has been damaged as a result of the U.S. failing to ensure strict rules of origin when the Canadian Free Trade and North American Free Trade Agreements were negotiated.