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Mandarin/Eng/Nat Pressed by the world's largest population, China is facing a serious environmental crisis. High pollution levels across the country and large tracts of arable land are lost every year to toxic poisoning, decertification and wind erosion. Beijing has long recognized the gravity of the problems and already spends billions of dollars each year on environmental protection. But strict new laws and government funding is not enough to reverse the severe degradation. Environmental agencies say individual behavior patterns have to change, too. In its latest move to tackle the problem China is introducing environmental education in primary schools to instill awareness in children. China's leaders are usually fearful of excessive American cultural influences. But they are welcoming a new U-S-style environmental education program with open arms. The so-called "environmental curriculum" is a well-established part of North American and European school educational programs, but plays a small part in most Chinese primary and secondary schools. That's about to change. The Hui Wen High School in Beijing along with fifty-four others in the capital, is experimenting with a U-S style educational program to instill environmental awareness in children from an early age. China's environmental situation is in urgent need of attention, with choking cities, poisoned rivers, severe deforestation and soil erosion. Eight of the world's ten most polluted cities are Chinese. Several of the nation's major rivers are heavily polluted. Among them the Yellow River, the country's second longest which also serves as an irrigation artery for grain production in the north. River pollution is mainly caused by discharging factory and urban waste. For years, the government ignored the unpleasant side effects of industrial growth, insisting national development must go on. But as side effects of environmental degradation take their toll on the country's economic growth alarm bells are sounding in the Chinese government. China spent more than 10 (b) billion U-S dollars on pollution controls last year - one percent of its 990 (b) billion U-S dollars economy. Some future spending is slated to go toward reversing an environmental decline in the west, a region of fragile deserts and grasslands where many of China's poor live. The communist government has made raising incomes there a priority for a five-year economic plan that begins in 2001. SOUNDBITE: (Mandarin) "For the development of the Western region we have to learn form the experiences and lessons of the development of the east. We want to avoid repeating the same mistakes and transferring pollution from the east to the west." SUPERCAPTION: Xie Zhenhua, director of China's State Environmental Protection Agency (S-E-P-A) But enforcing stricter policies and pouring in money alone won't halt the environmental decline. The mountains of trash often found littering Chinese cities show how it is also up to China's 1.3 (b) billion people to learn to change their every day behavior to avoid ecological disaster. Plastic bags, Styrofoam lunch boxes -- so-called 'white pollution' -- are excessively used and thoughtlessly tossed away. Environmental awareness has been absent in China until only very recently. Now, slowly and mainly in China's crowded cities, people are beginning to wise up. They're now demanding a cleaner, healthier environment for themselves and their children. Even so, recycling in Beijing is the exception rather than the rule. The alliance - termed the China Environmental Global Alliance, or C-E-G-A - provides fifty-five schools with textbooks and teaching techniques. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/1cf8d921adcc24ada45841681af57b13 Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork