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POLLUTION:CHINA’S REMARKABLE economic rise over the past 30 years has come at an alarming price in environmental terms, but the world’s fastest-growing major economy is working hard to clean up the devastating pollution of its rivers, lakes and skies.

As became apparent at the failed Copenhagen climate summit, China is not only an economic powerhouse, its now the world’s largest polluter, emitting more carbon than the United States, from whom it assumed the mantle in 2007. The country is forced to live with the consequences of rapid industrialisation, most of it driven by burning fossil fuels.