Since the founding of the Peoples’ Republic of China in 1949, the Chinese government has made progress in many areas of public health and safety, increasing mean life expectancy from 41 years in 1950 to 69 years today. Despite these efforts, health, safety, and environmental risks in China are still quite palpable.  Traditional risks from infectious diseases, floods, and cook-stove smoke coexist with mounting modern risks from industrial pollution, agricultural chemicals, traffic accidents, and lifestyle factors such as tobacco smoking.  This project reviews current morbidity and mortality patterns in China, and examines both their proximal and underlying causes and trends.   Uneven economic development in China has produced significant regional differences in risk patterns.  These are attributable to differences in both initiating factors (e.g. access to clean water) and mitigative factors (e.g. access to health care).  Analysis of risk causation in China is complicated because risks often have many contributing factors.  Mortality from air pollution, for instance, is influenced by prior lung insults incurred over previous decades from malnutrition, infectious diseases, and tobacco smoke.  Tuberculosis is promoted by overcrowding among rural migrants to urban areas, indoor air pollution, and the collapse of socialized medicine. Comparisons of age-specific risks in China with risks in more industrialized countries show that Chinese bear significantly greater risks of lung disease, liver cancer, and non-transportation accidents.  Chinese bear lower risks than more industrialized countries for homicide, fire, and motor vehicle accidents.  Reasons for these differences are explored.