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The paper presents an overview of current recycling policies in contemporary China within the broader context of China's efforts to protect and improve her social and physical environment. Starting with an interpretation of China's traditional agriculture as a 'recycling' and energy producing economy, different efforts to improve the use of organic waste materials in agriculture are shown to have had positive results which, however, could be further improved by modern methods of recycling developed in the USA and other industrialized countries. The recovery of materials and their re-use or, as it is called in the Chinese literature, 'turning the harmful into the beneficial' may be regarded as one of the guiding principles of China's anti-pollution policies not only in agriculture but also in industry where both labor intensive methods and modern equipment are in operation. Control of inputs and location are shown to play an additional role in China's environmental policies. The paper concludes with a presentation of the Chinese interpretation of the causes of environmental disruption in the light of Chinese sources available in translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]