A recent survey shows that environmental protection has become a top concern among Chinese people and more and more people in the country are joining in efforts to protect the environment.
The survey, conducted earlier this year by the China Environmental Journalists’ Forum, Unilever (China) Limited and a research center at Peking University, aimed to enhance environmental protection awareness among Chinese people.
Questions for the survey were published in China Youth Daily on January 31 and the organizers received almost 15,000 answers from across the country.
About 49 percent of respondents believed that the most important issue in China now is environmental protection, while the percentage voting for China’s large population and backward education system was 15 percent and 12 percent respectively.
According to the survey, most people would like to take concrete action to protect the environment, even at the cost of some personal interest.
About 65 percent of people said they are willing to buy environmentally friendly products, which could be 20 percent more expensive, and 69 percent said they will support any government move to raise tax for environmental protection.
Most people seem to be interested in pollution problems closely related to their lives. Over 56 percent of the respondents regarded air and water pollution as the top environmental problem where they live.
(China Daily 05/28/2001)
