Not to be outdone by our own crowdsourcing efforts recently, Chinese netizens are getting in on the act as well. A new project called Danger Maps that taps on the knowledge of China’s 564 million web users is helping to draw attention to pollution hot spots in the country, and is now set to expand to include themes like child abuse and missing persons.

Bloomberg reports that Danger Maps was built on Baidu Map – the Chinese version of Google Maps – by net user Lin Chunlei last year. It allows Chinese web users to look up sources of pollution in their area, for example oil refineries, power plants and toxic-waste treatment facilities. To date, Liu has plotted around 6,000 sources of pollution thanks to the input of other web users. Since the site’s launch, its become hugely popular, and recently received a donation of 50,000 RMB (around $8,150) from the Alibaba Foundation, which works with various groups to help preserve China’s environment.

Liu told Bloomberg that he was inspired to create Danger Maps after purchasing a Shanghai apartment in 2007 that was built on top of a landfill site – a fact he only discovered after completing the sale. He pointed to sites like Ushahidi.com, which was created in 2008 in order to track post-election violence in Kenya, and to various websites that track radiation near Fukushima in Japan, as inspiration for his own site. Liu said that the site is now expanding to include data on child abuse and missing people.

Surprisingly, Liu doesn’t seem to have run into any trouble with China’s authorities. One would suppose that certain government officials might be unhappy that Liu is exposing sources of pollution in the country, but the founder insists that he’s never received any complaints. He told Bloomberg that all the data is checked, and that he only removes details which are libelous or false.

Liu adds that, “the reason we started crowdsourcing is because if everyone can take action and add data, the level of accuracy will rise. We’re not defining our image as being in opposition to the government. What we want to create is positive energy.”

Danger Maps seems to be part of a broader trend in crowdsourcing that’s just beginning to emerge in China. Other efforts include one by the China Mangrove Conservation Network, which hosts a Baidu map on its website and allows users to upload information about damaged mangroves to it, with the idea being to raise awareness. Meanwhile, Baobeihuijia.com is a separate project that works to reunite parents with kidnapped children (child trafficking is a big problem in China). It’s founder says that the organization is also building a map that will show patterns in child trafficking, which might help the police put a stop to the trade.

But perhaps the real reason that China is condoning this kind of thing is down to one thing only. Money. Xiong Weiming of Beijing-based investment firm China Growth Capital told Bloomberg that the maps could benefit those seeking to invest in China. He says that overseas investors especially, will be concerned about environmental issues whenever they invest their cash into China, and as such, this kind of information can be extremely valuable.