NOVA: World in the Balance "China Revs Up"

Streaming video - 2004

NOVA takes the pulse of China's hyperactive economy, the fastest-growing in the history of the world. During the last two decades, China clamped down on its population growth through its controversial one-child policy, but in recent years it has relaxed those rules, moving in the direction of more reproductive freedom. As the sprawling country develops from a poor nation, China's air, land and water are beginning to suffer. The prospect that all Chinese will strive to live like middle-class Americans is daunting, since it has been calculated that if all the world's people had an American standard of living, two more planets the size of Earth would be needed to support them..