Berkley Center

In China, policy reform related to environmental sustainability is largely bureaucratic. Change starts at the grassroots level, which is then delivered to the provincial government. Rarely are protests and concerns considered at the central state level. But if environmental pollution affects everyone, why hasn't there been any nation-wide riots demanding for better policies? The answer is too simple: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is notorious for paying provincial governments to quiet the masses' petty riots, satiating its economic agenda by developing industrial factories.

While the CCP masks the atrocity of environmental degradation, the party's oversight simultaneously exacerbates the negligence of people's living standards across the nation. The CCP often says that environmental sustainability is a concern, but not its top priority. Because China has been lagging behind its Western counterparts due to its vulnerability to external aggression and internal instability before the Communist Revolution, it was able to come out of the abyss and rise as a hegemonic figure in East Asia.

However, China's lack of preventative measures have yet to prove it understands the extent of its contribution to the increasingly global environmental crisis. About a third of the world uses water from China's river, but rapid industrialization and climate change have led to dire conditions affecting air and water quality. Neglecting this pertinent issue will only further bury other contingent issues as well. It seems that the CCP is vigorously committed to modernization and cares more about its monstrous economic growth than environmental sustainability. But how is China still able to exert control over 1.3 billion people when it simply overlooks its environmental policy?

Based on my informal conversations with the Chinese locals and students at Shanghai's East China Normal University (ECNU), environmental pollution is a very contentious topic. Though it has been suppressed for too long, students here are trying to mobilize the community to approach the provincial governments and discuss how to address the issue more effectively. Our Own Oasis (O3), a student-run organization at ECNU, strives to spread awareness of environmental sustainability throughout the city of Shanghai. Students visit schools, conduct advocacy efforts to establish effective programs, and participate in citywide meetings to preserve the environment. These efforts are growing, and in bigger numbers, too. And if China isn't going to take preventive measures now, then it will soon lose the people's faith and trust in the CPC's governing capabilities. Especially since student demonstrations are growing in mass numbers, this may possibly pose as one of the biggest threats to the one party state.

The question now remains rather rhetorically, is the Chinese government ready for student demonstrations on environmental sustainability? The answer: "If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience." –Mao Zedong