In China, where population size is the biggest in the world and environmental destruction is proceeding due to the rapid economic growth and urbanization, there is a serious water pollution problem. Since 1949 water pollution caused by industrial wastewater has increased, and especially since the economic reform in the 1970s, pollution has escalated1 (Banister 1998: 995); at the same time the population in urban areas doubled from 1978 to 1995 (Shen 1998: 38-9), due to migration from rural areas to urban cities (Banister 1998: 1011; Shen 1998: 33), and urbanization emerged rapidly (Shen 1998: 38-9), with population growth and.
