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Kunming City

The city of Kunming, capital of China's most culturally and ecologically diverse province, occupies a conflicted space in the rapidly urbanizing country. Pulled by the need to modernize and compete in the global marketplace and the need to maintain and protect its cultural legacy, the city finds itself at war with itself. Development is necessary to remain an economic powerhouse in the region, assuring continued prosperity for the future. But, as is seen elsewhere in China and the developed world, industrial and technological modernization is almost necessarily at odds with an agenda of protection for the environment. And while environmental concerns might fall to the push of modernization elsewhere, Yunnan's two largest economic drivers, tourism and agriculture, depend on a pristine environment. The government has erected China's first environmental police force in the region, in fact. Meanwhile, though, the city chugs along with construction and demolition, shopping and transportation. The city has come resemble most others in China in that respect, but there's an underlying awareness that the city's toll on the environment-those beautiful cloud-filled blue-sky days, the tree-covered hills and mountains, the actual honest-to-goodness wildlife that's disappeared from most of eastern China-must be addressed. © M.SCOTT BRAUER

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