chinadialogue’s Beijing editor, Liu Jianqiang, has been awarded a “green expert” prize on World Environment Day at China’s prestigious SEE-TNC Ecological Awards. (See here for a longer blogpost about the awards and some of the other winners – it seems chinadialogue buried the good news in our earlier post!)
Liu, a former reporter for Southern Weekend, is one of China’s best-known investigative journalists, whose articles about controversial topics – including licenses for genetically modified rice and the reconstruction of the lake at the Old Summer Palace in Beijing – have revealed inconvenient truths and sparked public debate on environmental issues across China.
His reports about a proposed, illegal dam at Tiger-Leaping Gorge in south-west China led to the project being overturned after a public outcry. The Old Summer Palace controversy led to China’s first ever state-level public environmental hearing.
In their commendation, the judges described chinadialogue as “an important channel for social exchange on environmental and ecological protection both within China and internationally.”
Photo by Hossam el-Hamalawy
Regarding environmental journalism, Liu has said in the past: “The environmental crisis in China gets more and more serious every day, making environmental reporting one of the most important categories of reporting in China today.”
His latest book, about environmental and cultural protection in Tibet, Heavenly Beads, was published last year to critical acclaim.
To read more about Liu’s thoughts on China’s environmental reporters, see an interview conducted here by the Asia Society. He was also profiled in China Ink: the Changing Face of Chinese Journalism, by JudyPolumbaum and Xiong Lei.