Sophomore Research Paper

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During this whole month, I have been working on my sophomore research paper in my modern world history class. For this paper, I am supposed to either write about one country that is affected by three problems or one problem that affects three countries. I decided to write about overpopulation, disease, and communism in China. I chose to write about this because I thought that I would easily be able to find information on China since its a big, well-known country. While looking up information, I read a lot of things that I have never known before about China.

I never knew that China had such a bad environment. I used to think that China didn't have much pollution because I imagined it to be a place with a lot of farm land and not technologically advanced. I found some surprising statistics though. I found out that 320 million have no clean drinking water, seventy percent of lakes and rivers are polluted, and ninety percent of groundwater is polluted. The result of so much pollution is leading to a series of diseases. 400,000 people die of pollution-related diseases every year. Birth defects have been doubled in the last decade; More babies are born with excess fingers and toes.

The communist party is the most powerful party in the country. Even though the government consists of three groups, only the communist has power; the military and state council have little to no power. The communist party keeps a close watch on the public and does whatever it takes to uphold power. They forbid posters that criticized its policies, all religious activities are to be authorized by the government, and they tightly regulate the internet. This limits the freedom of the Chinese people. I have learned a lot through doing this research paper.