Inter Press Service
June 19, 2006

Despite international limelight and accolades, green activists in China still face great risks in their environmental campaigns as they run afoul of profit-minded local officials and energy companies with vested interests.

Beijing: When earlier this spring two of China’s environmental advocates were feted internationally with prominent awards and cited by Time magazine as among the most influential people in the world, it marked the coming of age for China’s nascent green movement. But despite international limelight and accolades, green activists in China still face great risks in their environmental campaigns as they run afoul of profit-minded local officials and energy companies with vested interests. … In May, Time magazine ranked Chinese environmentalist and writer Ma Jun among "100 People Who Shape Our World". A month earlier, civil society leader Yu Xiaogang, was awarded the 125,000 US dollar Goldman Environmental Prize, which is referred to as the "green Nobel Prize". … But nothing illustrates the risks to individuals, who take on the policies of China’s one-party state apparatus, more graphically than the fate of Fu Xiancai, a campaigner for the rights of people displaced by China’s Three Gorges Dam, who was beaten and paralysed in an attack by thugs ten days ago.