Communist Youth Eco Team Revs Up for Green Long March

In a somewhat rare state-sponsored rally, over 8,000 students gathered in Beijing’s Olympic Park last Saturday to show their commitment to environmental protection. The event launched the newest phase of the “Green Long March,” an ongoing effort to bring youth together and initiate a grassroots-esque environmental conservation movement nationwide.

Working with the Communist Youth League’s All China Youth Federation, US-based NGO Future Generations has gathered college-aged volunteers for the past two years to take part in educational campaigns throughout China, both to learn more in the field about China’s current state of environmental degradation and protection, and to teach others what they know. According to the Green Long March website, student activists have covered issues ranging from water quality, green agricultural practices, and the polluting effects of plastic.

At last week’s rally, GLM student leaders and well known environmentalists, such as Beijing-based WWF Director of Global Climate Change Solutions, Yang Fuqiang, spoke about the larger goals for China’s environmentalist movement, as well as what the GLM hopes to achieve in the near future.

In 2009, GLM hopes to mobilize more youth and communities to reduce their carbon footprint; conduct local training programs of student GLM volunteers on key energy issues; and strengthen information sharing between universities.

The rally was part of a 4-day conference and training, held on the campus of Beijing Forestry University, a co-organizer of the GLM. The bulk of the students’ 2009 field activities will take place this summer.

News of the rally especially resonated with me. That’s because I recently had the chance to see the first public New York screening of The Road Ahead: China’s First Green Long March, an award-winning film that chronicles the start of the journey of some 2,000 hope-filled, passionate youth endeavoring to “[ignite] a movement” in China.

A discussion with Bill McKibben and the film’s Producer, Michael Raisler, was part of the Asia Society-sponsored screening.

The name – Long Green March – is a deliberate reference to the 1934 trek by China’s Communist forces to remote corners of China in an effort to avoid Nationalist (Kuomingtang) forces. Participants in the Long March would later be seen as the Communist Party’s “true revolutionaries.”

The film echoed some features of the Long March: including a pioneering cast of idealists who, holding firm in their beliefs and cause, spread out to some of the most remote corners of China (their ten course trek covered 22 provinces).

However, to some who are familiar with the LGM and have seen the film, it seemed more reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. Director of the Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations and Chinese historian John Delury, who moderated the event, said “it seemed more like the period later in the Maoist era of the ‘sent down youth.’”

Speaking about aspects of the film which make it unclear whether the efforts are truly bottom-up or more top-down, Delury found the beginning of the film suffused with a “thick language of officialdom” evident in the “first line talking about harmonious society.” While Delury accedes that this gradually gives way to a

much subtler understanding of what’s going on politically, both with the government trying to do things and with being the impediment to getting things done

his allusions to the state-orchestrated tinge of the movement constitutes a relevant aspect of its robustness and greater significance, both now and in the future.

At times, the voyage of the bright-eyed students, a product of  over 20 years of incredible growth that has afforded them a dramatically better standard of living and relative comfort, into the homes of ethnic minorities marginalized by Beijing-enacted policies and cultural discrimination, appears less like a “harmonious” effort to save the environment, and more a campaign to enlist youth in spreading centrist propaganda.

In fact, the students may not have done as good a job of that as hoped. A small footnote in the film’s program explains “difficulties” the film encountered while preparing for the film’s production. In the words of the film’s Production company, Cinereach:

The communist party officials involved in sanctioning the march became anxious about the presence of a foreign camera crew, and Cinereach was forced to scale back…and maintain a low profile. Footage from the student cameras was intercepted “for review”…. Only a small portion of the footage was ever returned and Cinereach was unable to incorporate the students’ footage as planned.

Nevertheless, the film’s producer, Michael Raisler, favored the positive aspects of the process and brave honesty of the students, saying these student leaders are “starting to become, really, as committed to environmental issues as any of our greatest leaders.”

So there you have it. While these students, operating within the limits of state-sanctioned activism, may not be as “revolutionary” as some environmental activists might prefer, they nevertheless represent growing environmental awareness in China.

Luminaries like Bill McKibben underscored the importance of this “incredibly unique” movement, and said progress in this area “lies with people whose interests are as much in the future as they are in the present.” Such comments cast the Green Long March in both a meaningful and inspiring light, especially when you stop to consider how truly long the road ahead is.