Chinese and American scientists conducted a study that specifically lists the consequences of China's rapid growth on its coastal regions.

The study, released on August 8th and appearing in Scientific Reports, identifies that after reforms were passed in 1978, China's previously agrarian economy began to rapidly industrialize and the locus of economic activity shifted from inland regions to coastal hubs such as Shanghai and Shenzhen.

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Pre-1978, China's coast contributed to about half of the national GDP. After that year, the number rose to 60 percent. The study even found that coastal regions with little or no population growth still recorded a sharp increase of deleterious environmental impacts.  

"We show that in a country with a relatively constant coastal population growth rate, economic growth rather than population growth is the major driver of coastal degradation, while previous science often addresses how increasing human population degrades the coastal and marine environment," head author Qiang He of Beijing Normal University said. 

"This study flags the problem and screams out this is a problem that has to be dealt with," said Mark Bertness, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown University and the paper's second author. "This has all happened within a generation."  

Impacts include beach erosion, depletion of fish stocks, coral death, and pollution of rivers by fertilizer run-off.

"Across China's seas the trophic diversity and body size of marine fish did not change before 1978, but both have steadily decreased since," they wrote. "Harmful algal blooms have become much more frequent and extensive since the 1980s, with red tides increasing from less than 10 per year before 1980 to 70-120 per year since 2000. In the South China Sea, corals has crashed to less than 15 percent of pre-reform levels." 

The authors paint a grim picture. It is unlikely China's runaway economy and industrialization is likely to slow due to external factors or be restrained from within. The study concludes that coastal degradation is not likely to abate should standing economic trends continue.

He and Bertness state, "Stricter, systematic, strategic conservation measures are urgently needed to protect China's coastal and marine ecosystems, and to sustain China's progress in social, economic and ecological development."