Eco-China? Don't laugh.

With a quarter of the world's population, fast-developing China has borne the brunt of plenty of pundits' environmental worries. Chinese people want cars just like us! China's factories are accelerating global warming! The Chinese century will be the end of us! Not that it's untrue, for the most part, but here's another possibility: that the green trend that's lately caught fire here could also be big in China.

Neighboring Korea -- smaller, more developed, and highly influential in Asian pop culture -- is in the midst of a wave of combined nationalism and nostalgia (see: strikes against American beef) that's helped influence a trend for organic food, and by extension, for a natural lifestyle, although at this point it's more about the appearance of authenticity than its manifestation.

It's not impossible that this could catch on in China, and by all appearances, it's starting to. Witness a report in China Daily that simple muslin tote bags, like the one above, are all the rage -- just as they are here in the States. What's next, a return to bicycling? Don't write it off just yet...

Via JC Report