Isabel Hilton: You\u2019re now a filmmaker, you live in China — tell me about your background.<\/p>\n
John D. Liu: I went to China first in 1979. I was 27. I\u2019m half Chinese and my father had been telling me since [then United States president Richard] Nixon\u2019s visit<\/a> in 1972 that I had to go to China to help China develop. I was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and was living in Bloomington, Indiana, in the US. \u00a0I didn\u2019t want to go to China. It was an interesting time: I was young and America was an interesting place.<\/p>\n I had been to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, but China didn\u2019t seem very interesting. It had a communist government and when I looked across the border from Hong Kong when I was 13, I saw a man pointing a machine gun at me. China to me at that time meant [the philosopher] Lao Tzu and Taoism and Tang literature. Contemporary China didn\u2019t resonate. Then, in the late 1970s, my father said, \u201cYou must go because your grandmother is going to die.\u201d What could I say?<\/p>\n So I went to China and I realised he was right: it was much more interesting for me to film in China than in the US. So I did a semester of language training and I went to work for [the American television network] CBS as a producer-cameraman. I worked for them for 10 years.<\/p>\n IH: How did you get from there to the environment?<\/p>\n JL: I was so exhausted after the collapse of the Soviet Union<\/a> that journalism had lost its appeal and I wanted to make films instead news reports, so I went to work for Italian state TV, where I made one-hour documentaries, then for German TV for three years. By then it was the mid-1990s and the environment had been deteriorating. China was changing from a fearful place, just out of the Cultural Revolution, to a market economy. There was a flowering of creativity and greater social freedom. Although 1989 punctuated it somewhat, even that was book-ended by decades of peace and prosperity.<\/p>\n During this amazing period of reform, opening and economic progress, there was so much pollution. Finally it struck me: I live in Beijing, my children were born here, and we were all suffering. It was clear to me that I had both the right and the responsibility to do something.<\/p>\n Most of the Chinese seemed detached, as though it wasn\u2019t their responsibility. I think they thought the government was responsible and they had been conditioned to believe that they didn\u2019t have either the right or the responsibility [to act]. Some people thought, \u201cI\u2019m just one person; there\u2019s nothing I can do.\u201d Others thought, \u201cIt\u2019s nothing to do with me; it\u2019s [the role of] somebody else.\u201d<\/p>\n And in a way, that was my attitude. I used to think somebody ought to do something about the environment but what I meant was, \u201cSomebody else ought to do something about the environment.\u201d I was too important and busy. But after a while I realised that this was the same attitude that was part of the problem.\u00a0So we began the Environmental Education Media Project<\/a>, to take existing films on the environment to China and to translate them into Chinese.<\/p>\n We started working with the Television Trust for the Environment<\/a>, and we brought over [Britain\u2019s] Channel 4 and BBC\u2019s excellent documentaries, on pest management and water wars. Finally we took hundreds of films. Then we wanted to make films and needed research, but there was no research facility.<\/p>\n So we said to SEPA<\/a> [China\u2019s State Environmental Protection Administration] that we wanted to build a reference and research facility.\u00a0They have a huge US $70 million building built by Japanese foreign assistance, called the Japan-China Friendship Environmental Protection Centre<\/a>, on the Fourth Ring Road in Beijing. They opened up the cupboard where cleaning ladies were storing their mops. We said this wouldn\u2019t do. Finally they took us up to the seventh floor and opened a door marked \u201cLibrary\u201d \u2013 it turned out to be a huge room, 750 square meters — that had been empty for three years.<\/p>\n So we began to build a library. Now it\u2019s the largest concentration of environmental information in China — the China Environment and Sustainable Development Reference and Research Centre<\/a>. It\u2019s on the web. [American environmentalist] Amory Lovins<\/a> has spoken there \u2013 so many people have been through there now.<\/p>\n Then we started making films, researching water, wetlands, grasslands, migration and so on. Then we found HIV<\/a> was a huge problem in China and there wasn\u2019t much information about it. So we helped the Chinese Centre for Disease Control<\/a> to create the China HIV\/Aids Information Network (CHAIN<\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n IH: What\u2019s the level of environmental understanding and awareness in China now, compared to when you began?<\/p>\n JL: It\u2019s certainly a lot higher. When we started, people said in a poll that it was not their business. It was a very low level of awareness and understanding, a lack of engagement. If you do that poll [now], they will tell you that a clean environment is the most important thing in their lives.<\/p>\n IH: Do they do anything about it?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n JL: I wouldn\u2019t say everyone acts. There has been a lot of focus on economic development \u2013 as an individual as well as a societal goal. They are coming off a long period of deprivation \u2013 this is the first flush of consumption.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n IH: If they are just getting used to the pleasures of consumption, they must think that you are spoiling the party, talking about the environment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n JL: There is a movement of aware people. This is the nature of consciousness \u2013 you can\u2019t determine when people will understand things. They will understand things when they have to and hopefully they won\u2019t just ignore it. There is a growing concern by those who can see and extrapolate from what\u2019s taking place. If you listen to the Chinese government, they have excellent environmental policy statements.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Of course, the reality is that China\u2019s very polluted. There\u2019s a gap between rhetoric and reality. It takes a long time to catch up. Awareness is the first step. Action and behavioural change is required. The west has had a lot of consumption for a long time. China\u2019s consumption is still miniscule by those standards. Their aspirations of consumption came from the west and you can\u2019t export this model of consumption then expect them not to consume.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We were not spoiling the party but adding a voice of reason to this, suggesting that maybe thought should be given to renewable energies, recycling, pollution. Even that the basis of Chinese philosophy is one of harmony and respect for nature. Maybe these things could be useful if they were thought about rather than relegated.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n IH: You say the government has good policies but China is still very polluted. This is puzzling to people who look at China and see a one-party state and wonder why it can\u2019t enact its own policies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n JL: There are 1.3 billion people in China and I suspect that means there are 1.3 billion opinions. This has been a period of reform and additional personal freedoms, and I think there is also a social evolution. Ordering people to do things is unlikely to have the right effect. They had periods like that \u2013 and they are remembered as tragedies where every family had someone who was persecuted. The trend is towards greater liberation and personal responsibility.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n IH: And if the information isn\u2019t there? Yes, the government knows, but what about the interface with the people?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n JL: Personally, I also hate slogans. I think they are terrible. If you broadcast slogans, weak-minded people repeat them but they don\u2019t bother to go past them to learn. It\u2019s a problem. Some people think slogans are a great communications tool, but I think it\u2019s a problem.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Acronyms and jargon also exclude people and young people might be afraid to ask, so they miss the whole point, which is: There\u2019s a disconnect between what the government knows and what the people know. If they can\u2019t transmit the information clearly \u2013 or they think it\u2019s a matter of slogans \u2013 it won\u2019t work. What you want to transmit is understanding, which is the nature of the Environmental Education Media Project.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We are all learning about the relationship of human beings to the earth \u2013 it\u2019s a collaborative learning project. The goal is understanding for everyone, then to use the tools of communication to bring those to collective consciousness. The respect for air and water in China has been lost, partly through pressure of population, partly through urbanisation. So it\u2019s about consciousness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n IH: On a scale of 10, where would you put China\u2019s environmental problems?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n JL: I would say that pollution is the pressure of human beings on the planet and there is nowhere else where the pressure is greater than in China because there are 1.3 billion people. China has taken this extremely seriously, and in terms of rhetoric it\u2019s moving to a much better place. In terms of reality, we\u2019ll have to see.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n IH: How long does it take for reality to catch up with rhetoric?<\/p>\n JL: The Chinese are moving in a direction which is correct. They are theorising about eco-village urban areas and industrial parks, and they can actually experiment at that level. As a tiny environmental NGO [nongovernmental organisation], we were talking about these things and wanted a conference. But on of the planning commission people said, \u201cLet\u2019s build a few.\u201d The scale of that thinking was staggering.<\/p>\n IH: Are you more optimistic or pessimistic than when you began?<\/p>\n JL: Gosh, I think you have to ask that question every day. There\u2019s so much information and some of it is extremely sobering. There are physics models that suggest that climate change could make the surface of the earth uninhabitable. This is not a comforting thought. And knowing that this is from human impact doesn\u2019t make me feel good. So if the measure of whether we are successful is how good the environment is, the hardest thing is that you must look without flinching at this information.<\/p>\n IH: Why are so many people diverting their attention from this?<\/p>\n JL: Because it\u2019s not something that you really want to know. Knowledge is responsibility. If you are ignorant, you don\u2019t do anything. Remaining ignorant is a kind of strategy — not viable, because the species could end. But knowledge is a tough way to go, too, because then you really are responsible. If you know and you fail to act, then you are culpable. Choices made from knowledge are different from those made from ignorance. We are helping people gain knowledge. They may not thank us for it, but they may at some point realise that it was necessary.<\/p>\n