km2) per year. The vast plains in northern China used to be regularly flooded by the Yellow River. However, overgrazing and the expansion of agricultural land could cause this area to increase. Health risks Pollutants emitted into the air and water by China's rapid industrialization has brought major health concerns. The anthropogenic activities in China have decreased food safety and antibiotic resistance and have increased resurging infectious diseases. Air pollution, alone, is directly linked to increased risk of lung cancer, breast cancer, and bladder cancer and has already led to more than 1.3 million premature deaths in China and linked to 1.6 million deaths a year - 17% of all annual Chinese deaths. 92% of Chinese have had at least 120 annual hours of unhealthy air determined by EPA standards. As the World Health Organization states hazardous air is more deadly than AIDS, malaria, breast cancer, or tuberculosis, than Chinese air quality is especially problematic because of the scale at which it occurs. While farmable land in China is slim to begin with, the Ministry of Land and Resources reported that China has contaminated 33.3 million hectares of farmland that cannot be used for any constructive purpose. Consequently, China is faced with increased exposure to new pathogens that threaten public health as a result migrating wildlife from these dead zones. See also Agriculture in China Dependency theory Economy of China Economic history of China (Pre-1911) Economic history of China (1912–1949) Great Divergence Industry of China Industrial history of China Industrial Revolution Industrialization International inequality Modernization Science and technology in China Self-Strengthening Movement (1861–1895) Sino-German cooperation (1911–1941) Further reading https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0240851 Adshead, S.A.M. (2004). T'ang China: The Rise of the East in World History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. (hardback). Anderson, James A. (2008). "'Treacherous Factions': Shifting Frontier Alliances in the Breakdown of Sino-Vietnamese Relations on the Eve of the 1075 Border War," in Battlefronts Real and Imagined: War, Border, and Identity in the Chinese Middle Period, 191–226. Edited by Don J. Wyatt. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. . Bol, Peter K. "The Rise of Local History: History, Geography, and Culture in Southern Song and Yuan Wuzhou," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (Volume 61, Number 1, 2001): 37–76. Brook, Timothy (1998). The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China. Berkeley: University of England Press. Brose, Michael C. (2008). "People in the Middle: Uyghurs in the Northwest Frontier Zone," in Battlefronts Real and