CHINA'S

GENERATION GREEN

Reported by the UBC International Reporting Program

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INTRODUCTION | BY JIMMY THOMSON

Thousands of protesters in Guangdong province forced the local government to soften its push to build a new chemical plant. Emboldened by extensive social media involvement, the protesters confronted the Maoming government on its plan, and won.

The victory didn't come cheap: dozens of protesters were arrested, and there are rumours of injuries and even deaths, although those are denied by the government. But the hard-won battles are proving effective. This is the fifth time a proposal to build a paraxylene (PX) plant has been derailed by environmental protests, and building on that success environmental protests are estimated to be increasing by 29 per cent per year.

Environmentalism in the West is often tied to civil disobedience and anti-establishment principles, so it's unthinkable that China's authoritarian government would allow anything of the sort. After all, the government is known to imprison human rights and democracy activists – so why not environmentalists?

The Chinese government knows how serious the problem is. In March, Prime Minister Li Keqiang announced a "war on pollution," promising to shut down some polluting industries, and a new environmental protection law has finally been passed after years of debate. The new law gives some selected local NGOs the power to sue the government in the public interest, and gives regulators more power to punish polluters. Serious offenders can even be arrested.

Chinese economic growth over the last few decades is unlike anything the world has ever seen. The so-called "Chinese miracle" is manifested in the exponentially growing domestic demand for consumer goods like televisions, smartphones, and cars. There are now more than 240 million cars on China's roads, with more new vehicles added in 2012 than there were on the road, total, at the turn of the century.

The Faustian bargain has been a legacy of unspeakable environmental damage. This is reflected every day in newspapers and magazines around the world, and the country's reputation is inextricable from its toxic footprint. China has become infamous for its devastatingly poor air quality. Concerned about the adverse health impact on their children, some Beijing families are considering leaving the city or leaving China entirely. But not everyone can afford to leave.

CLICK HERE for a short video about the everyday challenge Chinese families face to keep their kids healthy in poisonous air.

How can China manage its dangerous water, contaminated soil, mountains of waste, and disappearing biodiversity? The country has become a symbol of the darkest side of economic development and globalization. And 300 million more people are expected to enter the country's middle class by 2020, multiplying the damage.

We know about the problems. But there has been little attention paid to the work Chinese people – particularly young people – are doing to mitigate the environmental crisis. In fact, the most common response from the friends and family of the journalists working on this project was, "There's an environmental movement in China?"

This series is about the generation that has inherited the waste, and a few members of that generation who are openly and actively trying to change the trajectory of the country to avoid disaster.

In the words of wildlife photographer Yuanqi Wu, "We are the generation at the point when China has become more open. We travel internationally, and we see the outside world through the Internet. We've been influenced by other countries' environmentally friendly ideas. And we want to tell the world what we want, what we think and what the government has been doing wrong."

MONKEYS

"In China, if you want to be a nature photographer, you must run against time. You are competing with the speed of the animals disappearing." - Xi Zhinong

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BY Umbreen Butt
ADDITIONAL REPORTING Yonglin Yao

The Yunnan snub-nosed monkey is hardly known outside of China, certainly not nearly as familiar as the giant panda, China's most revered animal. Yet the monkey and the effort to protect it has played an outsized and largely untold role in awakening China's growing environmental consciousness. Their preservation is largely due to the efforts of one man, a photographer who is now training the next generation of young Chinese wildlife photographers.

While endangered species, such as the panda and their habitats, are largely protected by law through China's system of nature reserves, most of the wild bio-diverse regions that remain in China are under pressure from development. Roads, dams, poaching and timber harvesting are common in protected areas. A third of China's national-level nature reserves lack adequate funding.

Yunnan province, comprising only four per cent of the land in China, is the most bio-diverse region in the country and home to approximately half of the country's birds and mammals. However, most of the protected areas in Yunnan are fragmented, and a state run mine operates in Deqin County just outside the boundary where Jacky Poon's team is filming the monkeys in the Baima Snow Mountain Reserve.

The number of national-level nature reserves has risen from 34 in 1978 to 407 by 2013. The national-level reserves are funded by the government and are designed to offer more species protection than lower level reserves. Hunting, fishing and logging are prohibited in the national reserves; but these regulations are not strictly enforced. Almost 15 per cent of China's land is designated protected in some way.

China's Nature Reserves

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In spite of the increased "protection" offered by nature reserves, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List claims that 1,000 of China's 5,000 plant and animal species are under threat. Thirty of these endangered species can be found in the old-growth alpine forests of Yunnan.

The urgency of preserving and documenting what remains is not lost on Xi Zhinong, "In China, if you want to be a nature photographer, you must run against time. You are competing with the speed of the animals disappearing."

As public awareness grows, Yunnan has become an increasingly popular tourist destination. Chinese eco-tourists have the means and the desire to escape the pollution and stress of China's hyper growth.

Chang Bin spent two days traveling from Shanghai in the hope of catching a glimpse of the snub-nosed monkeys. "The younger generation are born in cities, and perhaps will spend their entire lives there," he says. "They may never understand the importance of nature. So making environmental awareness a part of our education and work-life is necessary for the youth."

Poon's team wants to build on the growing interest in China's wild places with their new film.

FOOD SCANDALS

"Unsafe food will cause illness in a long time...And the fact is, even if you get cancer, you can't tell why." - Wu Heng

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BY Jimmy Thomson
ADDITIONAL REPORTING Xiaoqing Yang

The danger of eating food produced in China has become apparent over the past few years as news of food scandal after food scandal broke in China and around the world. Unsafe food has made thousands of Chinese consumers ill, and left millions of others with few assurances that their food was safe to eat.

Ever since the unappetizing revelation that he had been eating purposely tainted pork, 28 year-old Wu Heng has done nothing but work on this issue as an activist and author.

Wu, then a graduate student studying mapping, knew he wasn't the only victim, but there were no resources at the time for information on food safety. There were scattered news reports and plenty of rumours, but no public fact-checked database for people facing the serious food scandals for which China has become infamous.

So he built one. His website, Throw it out the Window, crashed within hours, overloaded with traffic. Within months of its launch, the site had mapped more than 3,000 verified cases of adulterated food contributed from readers.

The scandals ranged from melamine-tainted milk that sent tens of thousands of babies to the hospital, to pesticide-laden vegetables, to restaurants using fox hair and chicken feathers to make cooking oil.

The reaction was swift and overwhelming, and it had its effect on Chinese attitudes. Between 2008 and 2012, concern over food safety more than tripled, according to a Pew poll. But despite government crackdowns and the creation of a food safety ministry, Wu feels that nothing has really happened to make it better.

"I found that after I collect so much information about food safety issues, people get used to it," he says. "At first, they were very angry. But day after day…it keeps going on, and people get used to it. Even me, I get used to it."

Wu wanted to fix the problem by making it more visible. Now, he is concerned that all the website did in the end was to desensitize the public to the dangers of unsafe food. Those risks may not become apparent for decades.

"Unsafe food will cause illness in a long time," he says. "So maybe now it's ok, but 20 years later or 30 years later a lot of old people get ill or get cancer. And the fact is, even if you get cancer, you can't tell why."

While the average Chinese consumer is faced with the choice of eating potentially contaminated food or spending more to feed her family, Communist Party officials and the rich are able to afford better. The government has cracked down on those suppliers who would deliberately taint their food for profit. But meanwhile the risk has shifted. Now the environment is to blame, and the solution is far less simple.

The intensive application of fertilizers and pesticides puts more pressure on the available farm land. The country is the world's largest consumer of agrochemicals, but these are the least of the country's food safety problems. Factories and mines contaminate soil and water with heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, chromium and mercury, as well as pesticides and persistent organic pollutants, which are absorbed in food and accumulate in humans. Those chemicals can cause a host of problems. Symptoms range from nervous system malfunction to bone weakening to cancer, depending on the pollutant, its origin and its concentration.

China's Farmland

Sources

The Chinese government is characteristically controlling with the data it has collected on soil contamination. In December, the government released a report, detailing the problem but declaring many of the specifics a "state secret." Soil and vegetables polluted with just lead and cadmium have been found to decrease lifespans by 9 to 10 years.

The 33,000 square kilometers deemed to be unfit for cultivation is just the land that meets a certain threshold of pollution; there is an untold quantity of land contaminated to a lesser degree that may still be dangerous, but is cultivated nonetheless.

Despite knowing the danger, the average Chinese person is unable to afford the safer imported and organic food, which can cost as much as 10 times the regular price when sold in supermarkets.

The market in Shanghai where Wu shops is no exception. He knows the risks of buying food here, where a meal's worth of vegetables can be bought for pennies. But he has little choice.

"If you walk into a supermarket, you will find two kinds of food: one kind is organic food, and the other is the food you can afford," he says.

So this is where he gets his groceries and, like the vast majority of Chinese consumers, puts his health at risk.

But as in the West, not all organic food is sold in stores. For decades, a special farm outside Beijing has grown safe organic vegetables exclusively for the top brass within the Communist Party. Now, some regular consumers are going straight to the source. But even they might not be able to keep themselves safe.

"The environment is getting worse," says Wu. "Air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution: all these environmental issue(s) become one issue for unsafe food. If a farmer grows something on polluted soil, the rice from the farm is also polluted."

SAFE FOOD

"Healthy and safe foods should be a basic human right. And I think we want to challenge that it's not available for a large number of people." - Ming Jiu Li

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BY Katelyn Verstraten
ADDITIONAL REPORTING Xiaoqing Yang

Farmer Cheng Wang navigates his delivery van through a labyrinth of streets. The back of his vehicle is packed with hand-labeled bags of vegetables; the aroma of coriander and celery fills the air. But this is no ordinary produce, it is grown without any pesticides or chemical fertilizers.

Ms. Zhang waves as she emerges from her home. She has been one of Wang's customers since 2010. Shortly after her son was born, one of China's worst food scandals occurred. A dozen babies died and more than 50,000 were hospitalized after drinking milk contaminated with melamine.

Ms. Zhang was desperate for an affordable alternative. She heard about Wang's produce. Now, she buys her vegetables exclusively from him.

"I trust Farmer Wang and his vegetables," she says, smiling as he hands her a bag of leafy greens. "The price is very reasonable when compared to the market price. All the vegetables are good, it's impeccable."

Twice a week, Wang leaves his farm in Anlong village and drives 40 kilometres to Chengdu, a city of 14 million in Sichuan province, to deliver his vegetables. He is one of 9 farmers from Anlong Village who provide produce to around 200 city families searching for a safe alternative to chemically grown produce.

Chengdu map

Wang did not always farm organically - he once used pesticides as do the majority of China's farmers. But the chemicals aggravated his mother's rheumatism. He struggled to make a living as a farmer and the pressure to support his family was overwhelming. He thought he might have to leave his land and move to the city.

Then a local NGO, the Chengdu Urban Rivers Association, or CURA, came to his farm.

CURA arrived in Anlong village in 2005, with the goal of reducing the amount of agrochemicals running into the nearby Funan River. The following year, they introduced the idea of chemical-free farming to the 3,000 villagers.

Wang was one of the first farmers who signed up.

"When [CURA] came to introduce organic farming, I had a good willing heart to do it," said Wang. "I felt it would be very hard to leave this land behind."

China consumes more agrochemicals than any other country in the world, and these pesticides are often improperly used.

"Some farmers, they really apply excess pesticides to vegetables," Wang says. "Most customers prefer the vegetables with pretty, good looks. Ironically, the ugly vegetables are relatively healthy to eat because they are produced organically."

In a country where organic labels can be easily forged, as they were in a series of 2011 scandals, official certification does not carry the same weight as in Western countries. To keep the cost of his vegetables low, Wang has not applied for 'official' organic certification.

Business is good enough that he can afford his delivery van. Jars of spicy red Sichuan chili paste, gifts for his favourite customers, line the dashboard.

It is illegal to deliver produce without a special license, so Wang covers the vegetables with wooden planks in case he is stopped by authorities. To register his van as a 'goods-carrying vehicle' would cost more than he could afford.

Delivery days are grueling. By 8 a.m. Wang has been on the road for five hours, and has another eight hours to go. It's an inefficient system, but better than before. When Wang first began delivering in 2006, he didn't have a driver's license, he carried the bags of vegetables with him and took the bus to the homes of his customers.

Organic farming is not the most lucrative venture, admits Farmer Wang. After paying all his work expenses, he earns around $12,000 a year. But it allows him to keep his land, and he is protecting his family from the chemicals he once farmed with.

"We are different from big food producers. We cannot earn so much," says Wang. "But it's enough to support my family."

Helping organic farmers to make a living is one of the goals of CURA, providing affordable and safe food to customers desperate for a safe alternative is another.

Ming Jiu Li, 25, has worked for CURA for two years. He organizes the organic farmers at Anlong village and connects them with city customers searching for safe food. After graduating with an environmental engineering degree in the United States, Ming travelled through Europe. He ended up working on an organic farm in France.

"I experienced how you can make a direct impact on a community's well-being through food," he explains excitedly. "When I got [back to China] I Googled 'organic farming' and 'Chengdu', and that's how I got to know the Anlong Village Project."

His family was shocked. They had expected him to find a job in the city, marry, and support his family.

China is not only facing a food-safety crisis, says Ming, but a food security one as well.

"You have urbanization and all these new developments," says Ming. "These new condominiums and apartments are built on once-fertile farmland. Who is going to be feeding us? Now, we are a net importer of food, where once we used to be a net exporter."

In September 2013, China purchased three million hectares of Ukrainian farmland - roughly 5 per cent of the country's land. The demand for food - organic or not - is massive in China. China currently consumes 20 per cent of the world's food, while having only 9 per cent of its farmland.

Dozens of organic farms are emerging throughout China to meet the growing demand for safer food, says Ming. While uncertain of an exact number, he is confident both the supply and the demand for affordable organic food is growing.

And despite the challenges Ming believes that ecological farming could eventually be the answer to both China's food safety and security crisis – even it takes a while.

"Why not?" he says, his expression serious. "Anything is possible."

WASTE

"When your hometown is covered in garbage, the question arises: Why? How does this happen." - Wang Juiliang filmmaker

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BY Allison Griner & Carlos Tello
ADDITIONAL REPORTING Lin Xiaohong

At age 32, Wang Jiuliang launched his career as an internationally-known filmmaker in one of the filthiest places in the world: the waste dumps surrounding Beijing.

It all began when Wang, newly graduated from university, returned to his rural hometown. He hoped to shoot a photography project in the countryside where he played as a child. What he found shocked him. "All the beautiful things from my memories were gone, replaced by something I could not accept," said Wang. Waste had corrupted the landscape.

Back in Beijing, Wang - still angry about what he found in his childhood home - decided to investigate the garbage situation in China's capital. As he watched the garbage trucks sputtering through his suburban neighbourhood, he came up with a plan: to follow his own garbage and see what happens to it. That would become the basis for his first documentary, Beijing Besieged by Waste.

The garbage truck was leading Wang towards a waste management system buckling under the weight of a modern economy and bloated populace. Wang found garbage bags stuffed with consumer products-- a symptom of China's growing middle class tastes.

But Wang's rummaging surfaced something even more shocking: foreign waste, imported for recycling. "China has become the world's landfill," Wang said.

Wealthy countries - Canada included - send some of their waste overseas rather than processing it domestically, and China is the top destination. In 2012, China imported $9.5 billion worth of American garbage alone. Everything from broken Christmas tree lights to worn-out tires are sent by the tonne to Chinese shores, where they are picked apart for scraps.

But not all the foreign waste is usable. An unknown amount of garbage, some of it toxic, gets smuggled into China every year. What cannot be recycled gets sent to China's already-full landfills, where it mingles with domestic waste.

The sheer scale of China's population has made it the largest waste producer in the world, even though individual Chinese people produce far less than their Western counterparts.

Waste Production in China

Sources

Beijing Besieged by Waste documented some 500 illegal dump sites ringing the city. That first motorcycle trip following the garbage truck led Wang to one of Beijing's official landfills, Gao Antun. Like many of Beijing's landfills, Gao Antun was over-capacity, and illegal landfills were springing up to profit from the overflow.

With no official oversight, anything could be dumped at these illegal sites—including globs of brown sewage discharge. Or, as Wang put it, "the filthiest crud from the sewage."

"The air around you is a highly saturated stink. Numerous flies circle around you. You cannot chase them away, on your face, on your body," Wang said of the illegal dumps. "When you set foot on the soft, acid garbage, you sincerely feel unsafe. And you even get a feeling that you can get engulfed by it any minute."

Almost a year after Wang's first film was released, China launched "Operation Green Fence" to block toxic imports from abroad. Many of the landfills Wang shot back in 2008 have disappeared.

What Wang once dubbed Beijing's Seventh Ring—a circle of illegal trash dumps in the capital's suburbs—has now been managed by municipal officials.

"So there used to be a really huge garbage mountain here. For more than 10 years the garbage mountain was really high, higher than the electricity posts," said Wang. "When I came back in April 2013, I was very surprised. It was really flat here."

But where has the waste gone? That question would prompt researcher Chen Liwen to file her first lawsuit. Protests in large cities like Beijing, Zhengzhou and Shanghai are forcing authorities to look for more isolated, rural landfill sites, but a lot of the waste is disappearing into the mouths of incinerators. Emissions from incinerators can be notoriously toxic, and Chen is worried about the environmental impact.

Chen, 32, left university five years ago and immediately devoted herself to environmental work. She noticed an uptick in concern over waste, so she became a specialist in all things garbage.

Her attention is increasingly drawn to waste incineration, since the number of incinerators has spiked over the last four years. The Chinese government's latest five-year plan proposes to boost waste incineration rates from 12 to 30 per cent by 2015. Canada, by contrast, only incinerates 5 per cent of its trash. No other country is commissioning more—or larger—incinerators.

On the surface, incineration seems like the perfect alternative for politicians who wish to banish waste from the public view. Not only do incinerators save the space of a landfill, the burning process also generates energy. "It seems like the garbage has disappeared with very modern technology," Chen said.

But Chen knows better. That's why she petitions environmental bureaus nationwide to get data on incinerators' emissions.

Guangzhou Environmental Bureau was supposed to respond to Chen's request for information within 15 business days. Instead, she received a partial response more than a month later. Chen felt she had no other option but to sue.

Chen would emerge victorious. A court sided with her, declaring that the Guangzhou Environmental Bureau should have released its full emissions report. The ruling, however, was only a half-victory. While the bureau's actions were deemed illegal, it was never compelled to produce the missing pollution data.

Neither Chen nor Wang is giving up. Wang continues to chase garbage—but this time it's imported garbage for his upcoming film "Plastic China." He wants to show audiences both domestic and foreign how the waste trade is affecting his homeland. Chen still pressures environmental bureaus to be transparent about their incinerators' emissions. All the while, she plans workshops to teach Beijing residents how to compost their food scraps and separate their recyclables.

The problem is urgent. Both Chen and Wang are concerned that something be done quickly. Waste is contaminating the soil. When burned, the waste is adding to the thick smog choking Chinese cities.

And, unseen to both Chen and Wang, toxins from the garbage seep all the way down to the ground water that irrigates China's fields and quenches its thirst.

WATER

"I made a vow: if the Huai River water is not cleared up, I will not return home. I will fight with my back to the river." - Huo Daishan

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BY Leif Zapf-Gilje & Mike Wallberg
ADDITIONAL REPORTING Yujuan Xie

They had grown up along the banks of the poisoned Huai River and escaped to white-collar jobs in gleaming faraway city towers, but it took only one phone call to bring brothers Huo Minjie and Huo Minhao home. Their father, a tireless defender of China's storied Huai river and spur in the side of polluting industries, had been beaten. Badly.

Both sons quit their jobs. "I knew that if I decided to come back, I would likely have to lead a very poor life," said younger son, Huo Minjie. "I struggled with it but my father was doing some amazing things. He needed more young people to help him. He wouldn't pay me but I felt the desire to help in the fighting fighting fighting… So I decided to start working for the cause with my brother."

Their father had spent four years working full-time to save the river after realizing government efforts were failing. A 1994 central government mandate made cleaning the heavily-polluted Huai a national priority, but when a government report proclaimed that cleanliness targets had been met three years later, it was more than Huo Daishan could tolerate. "When I arrived at the Huai River, the water was still black… there were dead fish, and the river stunk," said Huo Daishan. "It didn't reach the standards. They lied. We needed to get the truth to the central government." But it was the death of his mother and 18 members of his family from cancer that motivated Huo Daishan to get to the bottom of what exactly was turning the sparkling river of his youth into a toxic mess. "It is especially the high rate of cancer that I cannot accept," he said.

"We realized if the pollution is in the river, the ecology has deteriorated. The people got cancer. It was then that the term 'cancer villages' emerged."

Home to 165 million Chinese and an industrial corridor, the Huai River basin is one of the most polluted in China. A 2011 government study estimated cancer rates at up to four times higher in villages clustered along the Huai, versus neighbouring towns.

But it is not the only area with a concentration of cancer villages. In 2009, renowned Chinese investigative journalist, Deng Fei, published a map identifying more than 100 cancer villages across the country. And last year, an official central government report used the term "cancer villages" for the first time.

It is perhaps unsurprising considering the state of China's waterways.

Estimates indicate that 31 per cent of the country's river water and 57 percent of the groundwater is considered unsafe to drink, even if boiled. This is a result of the rapid expansion of industrial production and leaching of fertilizer and herbicides.

Water pollution in China

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The worst polluters of the Huai are paper mills, chemical factories, and textile and food industries. It has ranked as one of China's dirtiest river systems since industrial activity picked up during the 1980s.

When his sons joined him in 2001, the magnitude of the pollution was daunting, but they made progress. They soon attracted media attention, donations, and volunteers. In 2003, they registered as the Huai River Guardians.

But when the Huai flooded in 2004, it flushed out pollution that had been locked in tributary streams, killing most of the fish. Huo Daishan was so upset that he contemplated suicide, by throwing himself off a bridge into a Huai tributary.

"But when I looked down, the water was black," he said. "I didn't even have a clean place to end my life. So I thought, I cannot end this yet."

He stepped back from the ledge, and committed the Guardians to a more pragmatic course of action. Rather than exclusively treating the disease, fighting the polluters and the officials who protect them, they would treat the symptoms and provide clean drinking water to the villages along the river worst hit by cancer.

Seventy-two year-old Wang Ziqing is a farmer that has raised his family in a "cancer village" along the river's banks.

"My elder brother, my younger brother, both of them suffered from esophagus cancer. Both died of this cancer... And also my uncle…There were too many family members who died of cancer," said Wang. "It is miserable for me to repeat this."

He's witnessed the devastation first-hand but now has hope because of the work that the Huai River Guardians are doing.

"Since the first purified water device was installed here on the east side of the village, the cancer rate has gone down significantly. But on the west side… almost every home, every family is suffering from cancer."

The Guardians have installed 26 water purification systems in 20 Huai river villages, including Wang's. Each filtration system can supply between 700 and 800 people but Huo Daishan realizes there is still much work to do.

Recently, the program had a boost: a $135,000 donation from the Japanese government, which is earmarked for 10 more systems. This builds on the momentum of recent years.

In 2007, Huo Daishan received China's greatest environmental honour, the Green China award and in 2010 was awarded a Ramon Magsaysay, considered by some to be the Asian equivalent of the Nobel. With all of the publicity and recognition, more people have joined the cause - there are now more than a thousand volunteers.

The Guardians' efforts have made a difference in cleaning up the Huai by reining in industrial pollution. They have worked with government agencies to identify the worst offenders, resulting in factory closures, relocations to regulated zones, and fines. Even the factory once considered the Huai's worst polluter, which Huo Daishan was investigating when he was beaten in 2001, has installed elaborate water filtration systems.

Fishermen have reappeared, but challenges still remain. Many factories continue to pollute illegally, evading detection by discharging toxins at night. And most villages are still without access to clean drinking water.

The Huo family remains resolute.

"Our generation happened to live in this era. We couldn't have chosen that," Huo Minjie said. "I was born here and the pollution came from upstream; it wasn't even created by us. And we don't have the money to emigrate. This is our fate. But we can fight it."

THE CHINA DREAM

"The number one question I get outside of China is: does China really want to go green? And do Chinese people really want to go green when maybe they think it's their turn?" - Peggy Liu

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BY Aurora Tejeida
ADDITIONAL REPORTING Xiaoqing Yang

As domestic consumption grows in China, and people aspire to live the way we do in Canada and the U.S., the country has the rest of the world worrying about the environmental impact of a growing Chinese middle class. Now that there's enough wealth, aspirations and consumer habits are changing. This dream of a lifestyle based on materialism and consumption became apparent with the 2013 film, 'Tiny Times.'

For the last six years, Peggy Liu has been working with China's leaders to change how government officials, businesses and the Chinese public relate to their environment. How does one woman make a difference in a country the size of China?

The most pressing challenge for Liu is to change the aspirations of China's rising middle class. She needs to figure out how to create a new set of values that isn't centered on conspicuous consumption. Some of the ideas sound simple; convincing people to take the subway instead of buying a car or using energy efficient lightbulbs.

Domestic consumption shows no signs of slowing down. According to the International Monetary Fund, last year China had the largest consumption increase in the world.

Consumption in China

Sources

Liu knows that it's a government mandate to be less reliant on exports and increase domestic consumption, but she wants to make it less damaging on the environment. Convinced there's no better place or time for her to make a difference, Liu is here by choice. She was born in the United States and studied electrical engineering and computer science at MIT before moving to Shanghai, a city she compares to Silicon Valley in the 90s because of the number of businesses and companies that continuously spring up.

Seven years ago, Liu founded JUCCCE, the Joint U.S.-China Cooperation on Clean Energy, and quit her job as a venture capitalist. She had been asked to organize an MIT Forum on the future of energy in China. "Believe it or not, it accidentally became the first public dialogues between U.S. and Chinese government officials on clean energy," explains Liu. "And so, JUCCCE was born."

JUCCCE works with three principles: promoting sustainable urbanization, sustainable industry, and sustainable consumption. Her organization has trained 700 government officials. The non-profit also organizes four energy forums a year and trains Chinese actors, models and singers to be 'green advocates.'

The idea sounds more conceptual than practical, but Liu has something most activists don't: she has access to top government officials.

"China [is] very different from the west, it's really top-down […] so when the top government says [something], most people try to conform. Of course, you always have exceptions. But when you have 1.3 billion people and most people are conforming, it's amazing what you can do," she says.

Changing that many aspirations is challenging. That's why Liu is using the term 'China Dream.' Even though the Chinese government is currently using the phrase to talk about rejuvenating China, for Liu it's a response to the American Dream and the cornerstone of her project. Since the end of 2010, JUCCCE has been using the term in presentations and public service videos designed to promote more sustainable consumption.

Liu's China dream is not the same as the government's. While China's leaders use the phrase to build national pride, Liu's dream is focused on making sure China's rapidly growing middle class will have an environment that's livable. Despite food scares and smog, Liu believes that there's a compelling reason to be living in China now. "It's worth the trade-offs to be in China and in Shanghai in this moment of history," she explains, even though she has two children.

"As a mom I feel guilty every day when the kids go out to play soccer or tennis and they have to put on pollution masks. I feel guilty when maybe they can't eat everything they want, but having them learn Chinese language, and Chinese way of doing things, is a competitive advantage for them as they grow up. So I wouldn't trade places in the world today," says Liu.

Production of consumer goods for export is a major component of China's economic growth, but the government wants to change that. Chinese planners hope the growth of domestic consumption will make the economy less reliant on exporting goods. As China's middle class aspires to live the same lifestyle that we do here in Canada, it's hard to be hopeful about the environment. But Liu is undeterred and optimistic about China's future. The real questions are: do they have the will to change? and do they have enough time?

ABOUT

Reporting on China's Generation Green began in September 2013, and was conducted by a team of ten journalism students in the "International Reporting Program" at UBC's Graduate School of Journalism in collaboration with seven Chinese journalism students from Shantou University Cheung Kong School of Journalism & Communication in Guangdong province.

Young Chinese adults have inherited an unprecedented rise in prosperity, but the booming economy also brought life threatening environmental degradation. The scope and scale of pollution in China has been widely reported. Less well known are the efforts of young Chinese who have rejected traditional career paths in favor of working to improve the environment of their country.

The focus of China's Generation Green is on those young people who are trying to make a difference. Five student reporting teams worked across China, focusing on water, food, wildlife preservation, air quality and waste issues. Through a mix of words, sound, video, photos and graphics, the teams tell the stories of these pioneers of the emerging Chinese environmental movement.

Check out the reporters' notebooks, compiled during their time in the field here.


The International Reporting Program


The University of British Columbia's "International Reporting Program" is a class designed to teach global journalism by enabling students to produce stories from the field. Housed at UBC's Graduate School of Journalism in Vancouver, the program gives students the opportunity to report on under-covered and urgent global issues. The resulting works of journalism are shared with the public through partnerships with major media organizations, like the Toronto Star, The New York Times, CBC, PBS, AlJazeera English, and through the program's website www.internationalreporting.org.

CREDITS


The Team


Project Credits

Executive Producer - David Rummel
Co-Executive Producers - Peter Klein, Kathryn Gretsinger
Senior Producers - Peter Herford, Dan McKinney
Editor - Kim Frank
Web Design - Travis North
Web Development - Tech Samurais
Web Producer - Chantelle Bellerichard

International Reporting Program Fellows

Umbreen Butt
Britney Dennison
Allison Griner
Emma Smith
Aurora Tejeida
Jimmy Thomson
Carlos Tello
Katelyn Verstraten
Mike Wallberg
Leif Zapf-Gilje

Shantou Students

Yujuan Xie
Zhenzhen Zhang
Haiyan Wu
Xiaoqing Yang
Xiaohong Lin
Yonglin Yao
Yacong Luo

Faculty

Kim Frank
Kathryn Gretsinger
Peter Herford
Peter Klein
Dan McKinney
David Rummel


Infographic Credits


Monkeys

(NUMBERS 0F PROTECTED AREAS)
MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION CHINA

(MAP SHOWING DISTRIBUTION OF PROTECTED AREAS)
China Species Information System (CSIS) 中国物种信息系统


Food Scandals

(ARABLE LAND MAP-)
FAO.ORG

(CONTAMINATED LAND THE 2 CITATIONS BELOW)
Nature.com
NY Times


Waste

(STATISTICS ON WASTE)
[1] World Bank/ Daniel Hoornweg and Perinaz Bhada-Tata, March 2012, No. 15 What a Waste: A Global Review of Solid Waste Management. "In 2004, China surpassed the US as the world's largest waste generator. In 2030, China will likely produce twice as much municipal solid waste as the United States."
[1] Daniel Hoornweg and Perinaz Bhada-Tata. March 2012, No. 15 "What a Waste: A Global Review of Solid Waste Management." (P. 80) Index J shows amounts of individual waste per capita by country, with Canada producing far less than Canada, the U.S., and many European countries


Water

(FOR PERCENTAGES OF CONTAMINATED WATER)
China Water Risk
CHINA MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION


China Dream

(STATISTICS ON CHINESE CONSUMPTION)
China's consumer spending is growing at an average annual rate of 18 percent, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, compared to 2.2 percent gain for the U.S (CNBC).

Smartphones
China's smartphone market continues to grow; since passing North America to become the largest smartphone market in 2012, total shipments reached nearly 300 million units in 2013, and we forecast 400 million units in 2014 and double digit growth rates through 2016 (DisplaySearch Blog).

Wine
China will overtake the U.S. to become the world's largest consumer of wine by 2015, says Euromonitor. About 126 million cases of wine were sold in China in 2009. The country is currently the world's fastest growing market for wine consumption, with growth rates of around 20 percent annually in each year of the last decade. Sales of imported wines are growing faster than domestic brands (Wall Street Journal).

Travel
China is home to the world's fastest growing travel market. With 65 million outbound departures expected this year, the UN World Travel Organization estimates that there will be 100 million Chinese outbound trips by 2020 (CNBC).