ABSTRACT
China, the world's most populous country, has had the world's highest rate of economic growth in the last two decades and has had the world's deepest decline in poverty. About 10 percent of the world's plants, mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians are found in China. Despite the substantial decline in the rate of population growth in China, population pressures and development activities have damaged the country's biodiversity resources. New environmental protection and wildlife conservation laws put into effect in 1989 facilitated development of a comprehensive system of nature reserves and rationalized categories of protection for endangered wildlife. As in many other countries, biodiversity protection in China has focused on establishing nature reserves. An international working group on biodiversity concluded that the effectiveness of China's protected area network for the protection of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is highly deficient due to the lack of adequate implementation.
