Land use in China
China has four times the population of the U.S., within roughly the same area. With 1.3 billion inhabitants, 20% of the world’s population lives in China. While the rate of population growth has been declining for decades, the total number of inhabitants has been growing and is expected to do so through 2030. China’s urban population is growing rapidly; between 1950 and 2009, the percentage of the population living in urban areas quadrupled from 14% to 48%. Meanwhile, the rural population is declining, opening the landscape in areas that are not urbanized. The forests and farming land of eastern China support far more people and major cities than do the grasslands, deserts, and high mountain regions of the west.
Chronic disease in China
In addition to the ageing of the population, China is experiencing dramatic transformations in many social and economic conditions that will continue to increase the incidence of major chronic diseases. For example, the country has recorded spectacular economic growth since 1978 and, on average, people's standard of living is far higher than ever before in the rapidly expanding urban areas. From 1990 to 2000, the proportion of people living in urban settings in China increased from 26% to 36%, the number of cities increased to 663, and the number of towns also soared. It is expected that urbanization in China will reach 45% by 2010, and 60% by 2030, with an extra 200 million more people expected in the urban areas before 2010. This growth comes at a cost in health terms. For example, a clear relation exists between urbanization and the prevalence of diabetes in China (diabetes defined as diabetic symptoms and a random blood glucose concentration of 11.1 mmol/L or more, a fasting blood glucose of 7.0 mmol/L or more, or an abnormal result of 2-h oral glucose tolerance test). Studies suggest that patients in China who were diagnosed with diabetes in middle age eventually lost an average nine years of life, and that risk of mortality was much higher than in Western populations.