China is running out of land. With a population of more than 1.35 billion people—that 0.05 at the end represents 50 million people—China needs more arable land than its vast territory can produce.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
Estimates from state-affiliated researchers say that anywhere between 8% and 20% of China’s arable land, some 25 to 60 million acres, may now be contaminated with heavy metals. A loss of even 5% could be disastrous, taking China below the “red line” of 296 million acres of arable land that are currently needed, according to the government, to feed the country’s 1.35 billion people.
Rampant pollution and unchecked industrialization are eroding the basic life-support systems that China’s population requires to maintain a dignified standard of living and the ever-expanding economic growth that brings it into being.
Global economic policies are undermining the ability of China’s people to build adequate civil society protections and to counter systematized corruption at the local and national levels, allowing foreign investment and connected politicians to circumvent basic public health protections and land use regulations and to take ever more land out of the food production equation.