China - The epicenter of overpopulationIn 1999, the world's population reached six billion. Since then, about 200,000 lives have been added every day, or about one small town per week. This population boom, however, is not evenly distributed across the world. In fact, many countries in Europe have experienced negative population growth over the past ten years. It is the developing countries that are most responsible for the exponential increase that the world is beginning to experience. The busy human mind has been scrambling and scrambling to find “technological solutions” to support our ever-growing population. The population should have reached a glass ceiling a few billion people ago, many say this explains the 1 to 2 billion people starving to death right now. We have reached a point where we are growing uncontrollably in size, exploiting our resources in an effort to survive before we can begin to find ways to protect them, thereby increasing the total production they could provide. As Edward O. Wilson says: “The epicenter of environmental change, the paradigm of demographic stress, is the People’s Republic of China.” China is home to a fifth of the world's population, or around 1.3 billion people. This population is expected to reach 1.6 billion by 2030. The majority of this population is crammed into the Yangzi River basin, China's southernmost region. The population surge took place in the late 1950s, when the world experienced a baby boom after the world wars. This period is called the "golden age" of Chinese history. The country suffered for almost 40 years of state wars and corruption from many different political parties. So when the communist party finally came to power, a united nation had...... middle of paper ...... water distribution. , mass public works projects were developed and began to combat this problem. The success of these projects could ease the water shortages that threaten more than 300 major cities. China is under serious pressure to find every possible “technological solution” to support its large-scale hatchery. Meanwhile, the eyes of the world will be on China to see how it manages its mass population. Let us hope that they will succeed, that they will find an answer and that the genius of humanity will be able to continue to extend the glass ceiling against which the bacteria, which the human population has become, is up against. Bibliography: Aird, John S. "China's family planning terror" The Human Life Review, Summer 1994 Wilson, Edward O. The Future of Life (extract, the bottleneck theory) United Kingdom, Random House Inc. 2002www. gdrc.org/icm/grameen-info.htmlwww.worldbank.org