The U.S. government and private American organizations should lend greater support to these citizen initiatives as part of a vastly increased program of interaction with China aimed at environmental protection. The opportunities for mutual benefit abound. Chinese environmental groups are essentially a phenomenon of the emerging middle class. They tend to be small and driven by well-connected leaders. They focus on raising awareness and working with the government.
Technical expertise is uneven, but political sophistication runs high.
National groups like Friends of Nature and Global Village Beijing have cultivated international sources for financial support. The Green Students Forum organizes a network of student environmental organizations at major universities around the country. The Society for the Protection of the Saunders Gull, focused on the preservation of habitat for this endangered migratory bird, was founded by a local journalist in Panjin City of Liaoning Province and has few connections beyond the city limits. U.S. Business and China's Environment Despite increased citizen participation and improved government policies, environmental problems in China remain intractable, and on a scale difficult even to imagine for us in the West. Five cities in China rank among the 10 most polluted cities in the world.