Pertinent Facts About China:

Current population ~ 1.2 billion
Population growth rate ~ 15 million/year
GDP gowth rate ~ 10%/year
Trade surplus with USA ~ $20 billion/year
Has 7% of world's arable land (see Chinese Agriculture)
Produces 20% of world's staple foods
Loses ~0.05%/year of arable lands to other uses
Staple food production increase ~ 1-2%/year
In 1990's China has become one of the world's largest food importers

“Ground-level ozone is produced in the atmosphere by a complex set of chemical reactions known as the photochemical smog mechanism. This mechanism involves the oxidations of volatile organic compounds in the presence of nitrogen oxides and sunlight. Ironically while stratospheric ozone protects life by blocking harmful solar ultra- violet radiation, ozone at the ground-level can harm life by reacting with and oxidizing the organic molecules that make up living organisms.”
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Anyway, much of the crap boiling out of China appears to source itself at the Yangtze Delta. This long, winding river would be a primary dumping ground for the nation, resulting in a delta buildup of toxic waste. Studies of El Niño (didn’t expect him, did ya?) show a temperature source that literally pours contaminated water from the South China Sea eastward north of the equator toward Panama. The warm water evaporates en route to the distant coast, with the east-west winds carrying storm clouds out across the Amazon Basin -- as well as into the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea to fuel the hurricanes that annually plague the Eastern Seaboard.

China's air pollution chokes crop growth
“The Chinese pollution measured is "what you'd see at a rural U.S. site in summer, maybe a little bit dirtier," says Jennifer A. Logan, an atmospheric chemist at Harvard University.”
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But then there are a whole lot more ‘rural sites’ in China than in the US!

And nobody really cares if humans are endangered by all this -- but once an animal is threatened...
• White Dolphins -- Pollution, Over-fishing, and Massive Development Severely Threaten Endangered Chinese White Dolphins.
• Pink Dolphins -- Rare pink dolphins still grace Hong Kong's murky waters, but toxic industrial waste from China, over-fishing and massive infrastructure development appear to be stacking the odds against their survival.

A Global Problem: China's Pollution
Fires out of China? I seriously doubt that. The flare-ups seen go from March to early October, then little spurts from mid to late October and again early to mid November. The rivers got cold and the toxins were not reacting the way they do in the heat of summer.

Also, China boasts more than 50,000 rivers, with a very strong majority of them emptying directly or indirectly, though completely unfiltered and unmonitored, into the Pacific Ocean.

And the satanist (purposely lower-cased just to piss satan off) in me simply must add that, with the latest addition of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), there are currently 666 cities in China.

For the Amazon, the flare-up between March and April are shaky at best. This is after the dry season and the expected fires would have already depleted the natural grass fuel required here. Then the smaller flares of July through mid August simply cannot be natural fires, because this is at the height of the rainy season for the basin (northern hemisphere weather systems). You won’t find burnable material here for months. The large flare of September through late November, though, is very acceptable, even appearing to form at the head of the aforementioned pampas region.

Africa, too, leans heavily toward possible grassfires. The region just north of Zaire and south of Chad is the famous veldt of Africa, but early March through mid June takes us again through the end of the dry season and into the rainy season. Then late July, at the tail-end of the rainy season, into early December.

Some of this is definitely natural, but, damnit, China needs to get its act together.

Are we having fun yet?
Dan