China is trying in a generation to develop its industry to an extent that took other developed countries generations. As a result, the nation is suffering from various environmental problems, including air and water pollution, water shortages, forest depletion, the contamination of soil, massive accumulations of waste and acid rain. Japan used to be called the "pollution (kogai) superpower."

China, on the other hand, with its wide variety of environmental problems, now seems like a "department store of environmental problems."

India's Mohandas K. Gandhi once said if people in developing countries used electricity, drove cars, drank water and ate meat and fish as much as people in developed countries, we would need one or two more Earths. The fear has now become a reality in China.

There are still hundreds of millions of people mired in poverty and suffering from shortages of water and electricity in inner China, but the nation already has a pollution problem. If all the people in China began to enjoy the wasteful lives of those in developed countries, the impact on not just China, but on the rest of the Earth, would be tremendous.

Economic and population growth will together accelerate borderless pollution in the air, oceans and rivers. If China begins importing raw material to provide enough food and energy to meet the growing demand, the impact of the nation's mass market would be formidable. In this sense, China's environmental problem is a great threat to international society.

The Chinese Communist Party has taken probably the most effective--yet the most painful--environmental measure in the form of its one-child policy to prevent a population explosion. It has also begun to halt cultivation to allow forests to regrow, and take steps against acid rain and to improve water quality. But the problem is whether the efforts of China alone will be sufficient to protect the environment while the country keeps up its current rate of development.

Seeing the remarkable development in cities like Beijing and Shanghai, many from developing nations, including Japan, argue that China is already an economic power and should therefore be held responsible for fighting pollution.

With hundreds of millions of its citizens still in poverty, China has little choice but to continue using coal, the cheapest natural resource, knowing full well it causes air pollution and leads to global warming. There is little reason to expect China to take strict energy efficiency measures, develop alternative energy sources or introduce desulferizing scrubbers.

Tokyo, meanwhile, in October laid out its economic assistance plan for China. The plan stresses the importance of environment policies, such as water management and forestry protection, and tackling poverty.

This increase in overseas development assistance linked to environmental issues, however, is on its own insufficient to solve the problem. About 90 percent of Japanese ODA to China comprises yen loans, so most of the environmentallinked ODA tends to be spent on public works projects such as power plants and railroads. More work needs to be done in a number of areas, including joint research and development of cheap anti-pollution technology, environmental protection education and exchanges among environmental nongovernmental organizations.

The Japanese government has in the past supported some of Beijing’s environmental initiatives. But we should seek ways to provide assistance with projects put forward by the Japanese government. Interactive cooperation of this sort will require Beijing to become more transparent.

Japan, Asia’s first developed nation, and China, which has the biggest environmental problem in the region, should develop a dialogue on saving the Earth. We should realize Japan-China environmental cooperation, together with NGOs.