Some Environmental Concerns in the west of China

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This generates great concern among some observers within China and，perhaps more vocally，outside the country，about the potential impacts on the environment and minority cultures in the west of these proposed massive infrastructure construction projects（e.g.，water diversion schemes and resulting population movements to the western region…and surely there will be more to come as components of the WRDS become fully implemented）.Particularly troublesome is the fact that the Chinese bureaucracy，a command-and-control decision-making structure，does not yet haveexperience in the undertaking of objective，scientifically based environmental impact assessments；nor has it taken full advantage of existing assessments carried out in similar ecological settings elsewhere around the globe.

Furthermore，each of the specific climatic and environmental problems listed earlier in this article is considered a“Creeping Environment Problem（CEP），”asdefined by Glantz（1994；see also Glantz 1999）.CEPs are those“changes that are imperceptible from one day to the next，but over some period of time they become noticeably worse.By then，however，attempts to address them have become more difficult as well as more costly.”Thus，the risk is that any government tendency to ignore CEPs in the short term might very likely have environmental and financial consequences that will eventually set back many short-term developmental gains.

Although there have been several studies on the CEPs in developed and developing countries（the United States，the Soviet Union，Vietnam，Brazil，Hungary），creeping environmental problems have not been studied in China.As a result，several of the above-mentioned environmental problems have not yet been successfully assessed or addressed in China.The overriding goal of dealing with CEPs is to identify potential thresholds of degradation（or more neutrally，environmental change）to enable the government to respond to them sooner than usual:that is，before the low-grade，slow-onset，long-term，cumulative environmental changes become crises.

Developing the western provinces will be a daunting task，and the Chinese authorities know it.The history of economic development efforts in many other countries as well as in China itself is strewn with scores of examples of development successes and failures，with the memories of the failures being much more enduring.