China’s economic juggernaut has come at a cost. Fudan University professor Wang Feng, also a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said “China has heavily mortgaged its future” by compromising the environment and its population.

The debilitating pollution has settled in the “best place,” the capital of Beijing, where political leaders must breathe it and therefore must deal with it, he said. The one-child policy has created an aging population with serious implications for society, according to Wang — China’s young workforce will shrink by one third in the next decade. He explains further.

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