The study looked at China's ecological footprint from 1978 to 2003. They found that each person's ecological footprint gradually increased, reaching 2.2522 hectares per person in 2003. Meanwhile, the capacity of the environment to sustain this footprint increased to 0.8819 hectares per person. However, this led to a deficit of 1.3702 hectares per person by 2003. Forecasts suggest that by 2015, the ecological footprint per person could rise to 3.1717 hectares, exceeding the environment's capacity. This means the current way of development is not sustainable, and China's environment is at risk due to the increasing mismatch between human activities and nature's ability to cope.