Growing cities, overuse of fertilizers and factory wastewater have degraded China's water supplies to the extent that half the nation's rivers and lakes are severely polluted. China aims to spend $850 billion to improve filthy water supplies over the next decade, but even such huge outlays may do little to reverse damage caused by decades of pollution and overuse in Beijing's push for rapid economic growth. Photo: Fishermen row a boat in the algae-filled Chaohu Lake in Hefei, Anhui province, June 19, 2009. (Photo by Jianan Yu/Reuters)

A Chinese girl peeps at Santa at a shopping center on Christmas Eve December 24, 2011 in Beijing, China. Though Christmas is not officially celebrated in China, the holiday is becoming increasingly popular as Chinese adopt more Western ideas and festivals. (Photo by Feng Li/Getty Images)

Low economic conditions in China’s urban areas have sparked an increase of beggars faking disabilities in an attempt to gain more money. Cities like Shanghai and Hong Kong are littered with naive tourists who are more than willing to hand over a few yen to anyone appearing to be handicapped in anyway.

An instructor (C) adjusts the posture of students of flight attendant major during a training session at Anhui Foreign Languages University, in Hefei, Anhui province, China, May 25, 2015. (Photo by Reuters/China Daily)

Employees wear "No-Face" masks during working hours at a service company in Handan, Hebei Province of China. As a service company, staff must smile to customers every day. On “No-Face Day”, staff wore masks to hide their facial expressions and allow them to relax. No-Face is a character in the 2001 animated movie “Spirited Away”, a silent masked creature who has no facial expressions.

A Chinese tourist wears protective gloves as she holds a baby Siberian tiger as they pose for pictures at the Heilongjiang Siberian Tiger Park on August 16, 2017 in Harbin, northern China. The center is one of two Siberian tiger parks in the Chinese province of Heilongjiang, about 500 kilometers (300 miles) from the border with Russia. It is considered the world's largest for breeding the Siberian, or Amur, tiger which is listed as endangered by the World Wildlife Federation. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

A man performs a split as he practices Kung Fu at Beihai Park in Beijing, China August 20, 2017. (Photo by Reuters/China Stringer Network)

People fight for the ball as they take part in a mud football match during a festival for celebrating harvest in a village in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, China September 24, 2017. (Photo by Reuters/China Stringer Network)