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)

China has sent its first woman into space on a mission to dock with an orbiting station, the latest step in an ambitious programme to go to the moon and on to Mars.

Photo: China's first female astronaut Liu Yang, waves during a sending off ceremony before she departs for the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft rocket launch pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, China, Saturday, June 16, 2012. China will send its first woman and two other astronauts into space Saturday to work on a temporary space station for about a week, in a key step toward becoming only the third nation to set up a permanent base in orbit. (Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)

“A Little Monkey on the Cliff”. “A cold front hit the Nagano prefecture. I saw a little monkey enduring the cold in Jigokudani Monkey Park. This little monkey is really cute”. (Photo by Hidetoshi Ogata/Smithsonian Photo Contest)

SpaceX and NASA Launch of the PACE spacecraft atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Brevard County, Florida on February 8, 2024. Photo shows launch and booster landing back at CCSFS about 7 minutes 30 seconds after launch. In the foreground is one the new modular lifeguard stands at Minuteman Causeway, replacing the old wooden tower. (Photo by Malcolm Denemark/Florida Today via USA Today Network)

This picture taken on September 11, 2023 shows Moon Jellyfish (with rings) and Sting Jellyfish (yellow-orange inside) among a smack of a several thousand swimming off Seglvik, in northern Norway. (Photo by Olivier Morin/AFP Photo)

Italian movie star Gina Lollobrigida shows a 0.95 super-grand-angle lens mount on a 35mm camera, as she presents her collection of photographic equipment at her home on the ancient Appian Way on the outskirts of Rome, July 2, 1964. (Photo by Girolamo di Majo/AP Photo)

Youth council member Mia Buckles plays with 18-month-old Kobe Buckles-Benson as Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visits the Cowessess First Nation, where a search had found 751 unmarked graves from the former Marieval Indian Residential School near Grayson, Saskatchewan, Canada on July 6, 2021. (Photo by Shannon VanRaes/Reuters)

American actress Tommy Dorfman and American Afro-Panamanian actress Tessa Thompson at Boom Boom Room's Met Gala After-Party on September 13, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by Marc Patrick/BFA.com)