Since 1978, when its market reforms began, China has clocked an average annual growth rate of 8.9 percent--the longest and most sustained growth of any country in modern history and one that has propelled it ahead of Britain to become, this year, the fourth-largest economy in the world.

As the country's economy surges forward, however, so does the pileup of social contradictions. China is the second-biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world. Seventy percent of the water in the country's lakes and rivers is undrinkable because of pollution. Environmental ills annually cause 300,000 deaths and cost $200 billion--equivalent to 10 percent of the gross domestic product--due to loss of work, medical expenses and government outlays.

More important, unimaginable problems have emerged from the migration of 150 million peasants who are victims of a decision to focus economic growth on urban expansion at the expense of rural development. In the cities the peasants live in shantytowns and work under conditions of extreme exploitation. Meanwhile, an estimated 20 million children have been left behind to fend for themselves, and rural authorities have noted a marked increase in robbery, petty crime, suicide and rape involving these unsupervised children. In cases where only the husbands depart for the cities, the wives are left to care for children and in-laws and to till the family farm. Many are so overburdened that they choose to end their lives, most commonly by swallowing pesticides. China has the highest rate of female suicide in the world, and its rural rate is three times that of the cities.

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