Is China jumping the gun by holding the 2008 Olympics next year? Nations are pointing at China as the largest threat to the world’s environmental health. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is not yet the clean Olympic model they would like to see. Strikingly, the idea of boycotting the nearing Olympic Games because of China’s poor environmental record was actually a campaign issue in France’s recent election.
I started coming to China during the summer of 2004 shortly after I turned 15. During each consecutive year that I have returned, I have constantly been horrified by the pollution I’ve seen. There are towns that have black rivers of sewage flowing through them. Deserts have formed in places that were once semi-fertile plains. Piles of trash and debris bob along coastlines, and smother roadside foliage. Once-scenic spots, such as the Seven Star Crags in western Guangdong, are barely visible due to smog. But everyone I have talked to, from Canton to Chengdu and Xi’an, from Chongqing to Shanghai and Beijing, and on the crowded trains and buses in between, has told me that things are improving in their country. The rivers are getting cleaner. Public transportation is improving and becoming more accessible. More alternatives to coal are being utilized for energy production: the Three Gorges Dam will produce the most hydroelectric power out of any single dam in the world. In the Tibet Autonomous Region, families are using photovoltaic panels to produce electricity. In Shanghai, citizens are growing vegetables with environmentally-friendly methods. In Sichuan, farmers are turning to more sustainable practices. In Beijing, people are better insulating and organizing their homes to be more energy efficient. The Chinese are not being passive. University students, government officials, and the general public are more and more aware and proactive about the environmental dangers that face their great nation.
From the outside, we must take an objective view on China’s current position. China has been bounding forward through industrialization and modernization at unprecedented speeds: it has done in 15 years what it took most Western countries to do in the better part of a century, and with an explosive population to support. In recent years, the world has become more and more environmentally conscious. Even the United States has had to accept the realities of global warming and climate change. China is riding a tidal wave of economic development, but now feels the snare of hands holding it back…ordering it to reduce emissions, slow production, and develop cleaner factories and processes. China can use this to its advantage though. A strong showing in 2007 and 2008, with an obvious and palpable effort to improve environmental efforts, would surely be a crowd pleaser on a global scale. A successful Olympics would make even the greenest Frenchman lower his nose, and it would set the stage for welcome future development in China.
Instead of China being the classic clean Olympic model in the eyes of the world, it will be a revolutionarily clean one. The Olympics is the spur that a nation like China needs; China will prove that it is possible for a developing nation to clean up its act. It will be a real rite of passage towards Chinese sustainable economic development. Need we wait four more years for the PRC to be ready? No. China can be successful, especially if I have anything to do with it.
I am currently working at a non-governmental organization in Beijing called FutureGenerations that is striving towards that success: we want China to be a Green exemplar on the world front. We want China to be an example that will enable other developing nations to build on its accomplishments. This summer, on July 7th, 2007, a Green Long March across China will begin. It will echo the spirit of the famous Long March of the 1930’s when thousands of Chinese patriots set forth in the hope of building a new China.
The Green Long March will be the largest environmental conservation youth movement in China’s history. The March will be aired on national and international television. Tens of thousands of people across the nation will be directly impacted by it. Native organizations such as the Youth Federation at Beijing Forestry University, the Association of Beijing University Student Volunteers for Environmental Protection, the Youth Research Center for Ecology and Culture, and the National Youth Association for Ecological Protection, in cooperation with FutureGenerations, have organized the Green Long March. The concept is simple: groups of trained students will march along ten routes plotted through ten of China’s most important ecological zones, from the northeast forests of the Heilongjiang Province to the snowlands and high plateaus of the Tibet Autonomous Region to the Rainforests of the Yunnan Province, spreading conservation awareness and solutions to local populations and education centers. The students will also be recording local accomplishments seen along the way to eventually file into a national compendium of environmental successes. The marches will last from two to four weeks and will involve 43 Chinese Universities and over 1000 marchers. The March has been endorsed by eleven ministries and government offices, and is being sponsored by both national and international companies. The Chinese Communist Youth League has given their full support.
China is on its way to passing the rite of a successful Olympics; the Green March will be hard, but in the fervent spirit of the Long March that happened over 70 years ago, the Chinese want change in their nation, and they will have it.
Editors This summer, Choate graduates Eliot Jia ’06, Frank Hamilton ’06, and Case Carpenter ’06, will be joining Depman on the Green Long March (GLM). You can contact him at Depman.ea@gmail.com for more details- or if you are interested in joining the GLM.
