China is following the capitalist path to riches - including exporting its environmental problems. The world can not supply enough timber - nor oil, natural gas and other resources - for China to industrialize to the extent it wants. What we are witnessing is the building of a huge economic bubble that is draining the Earth's ecology and will soon pop - leaving neither economic gains or ecological systems. There are no easy answers, but a global set of rules regarding acceptable national patterns of resource use would be a start.

KR Washington Bureau | 02/28/2005 | China protects own timber while smuggling rare woods

NANXUN, China - China's voracious appetite for timber is threatening exotic forests as far away as Brazil, West Africa, Indonesia and Russia's Far East. Much of the timber bound for Chinese sawmills comes from countries where illegal logging is rampant. Environmental groups are sounding an alarm, saying the trade in illegal timber fosters corruption and encourages the devastation of some of the globe's most fragile regions.