Understanding Environmental Education in the People's Republic of China: a national policy, locally interpreted

Abstract

Summary Since 1979 China has been attempting to reform its rather poorly functioning command economy, which suffered from a poor allocation of resources, a lack of incentives, irrational and arbitrary pricing, great waste of resources and a rigid and stultifying bureaucracy. At the same time there has been considerable acknowledgment for some time at the highest levels of Chinese government of the need to ensure environmental sustainability and this has been most recently confirmed in the form of ‘ten great changes’ needed in Chinese environmental thinking. This paper describes the processes whereby environmental policies are created and disseminated in China and points to some of the issues facing western educators who wish to work with Chinese colleagues in advancing global sustainability. It concludes that the problems facing environmental education in China may not be so very different to those elsewhere in the world.