Hongyi: China's Greta fighting for the climate. Seventeen years old and full of courage.

A solitary battle, without the massive following of her Swedish peer, battling the mistrust and hostility of the Chinese government, which fears it could become a tool of political opponents. Since May 24, 2019, she has been painting signs and demonstrating in front of the Guilin city government building.

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ou hongyi greta thunberg chinese

A very stubborn person. That's how she defines herself. Ou Hongyi, a 17-year-old from Guilin city in southern China, who spent his summer reading Gandhi's essays on non-violence and planting 300 trees in the surrounding area, unlike his peers, who are busy with college entrance exams or vacations.

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CHINESE GRETA THUNBERG

Sitting in front of the government building in Guilin, where she lives, with large, colorful hand-written signs, Hongyi is the first Chinese girl to lead a systematic school strike in favor of climate, inspired by the movement Fridays For Future started by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. 

Since May 24, 2019, he has been leading a solitary fight against climate change., and like her Northern European peer, she's smart, intelligent, and determined. And courageous, because unlike Greta, she's often clashed with her family, school authorities, and even the city police. Ou Hongyi has more followers on social media and in the West than in China, a collectivist culture that neither understands nor tolerates individual initiatives so disruptive and intense to report. 

And, indeed, Hongyi's story is the story of a nerdy and well-prepared girl who takes initiative, thinks, and studies things beyond the school curriculum. She cares about her community and the world around her and defends her beliefs, even at the cost of sacrificing her academic progress and her future dreams. 

Hongyi, or Howey in English spelling, as her friends call her, suspended herself from school after being excluded from an international exchange program. precisely because of her protests, and now she risks losing her university admission as well. Studying at Harvard, her great dream, is out of the question. In reality, however, her commitment to climate action is more of a moral than a political issue. In an interview with the Guardian, she confided: "The climate emergency is the greatest threat to the survival of humanity. I feel anxious every day about the climate and the extinction of animal species. I don't want to stop, and I want other people to follow me." 

Her father, Ou Jun, said in one of the few interviews he gave to the media that his family would never force her to renounce her beliefs, but also that, as parents, they are worried about her protest and how it could derail her future.

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Image taken from Hongyi's Instagram profile

TO KNOW MORE: Greta, the new symbol of a world that wants to change. Her story as a child prodigy, when she began fighting and where she's come from. Despite the criticism (photo)

OU HONGYI

Hongyi, however, has no intention of stopping, most of the time protesting alone, not even understood by the city's community: as soon as her campaign began to attract more attention, she chose to leave her family home (very unusual for a minor in China) and now lives alone in a hostel in Guilin. Her short-term goal is to involve other young people like her, perhaps starting with her latest project, Plant for Survival, which encourages young people to plant trees. From November 2019 to January 2020, the group has already planted more than 300 trees.

Hongyi's seventeen years, however, come through forcefully when she tells the Bangkok Post she feels alone: ​​"People admire my courage but don't understand my commitment. When things go well, they simply wish me good luck. Others tell me to go back to school or think there's something wrong with me." 

The reality, however, is much more complex than the reconstructions of the newspapers: the Chinese authorities do not want to undermine its commitment to the climate, it is not the justice of the protest that is being questioned, but rather the fact that for the type of Chinese society and for its government, committed to green policies and a green turn that will lead them to reach more than acceptable emission levels by 2030It's unthinkable that a young girl would attract supporters and join a purely Western protest. Beijing, in fact, is ill-attracted to any potential threat to the social stability of a political system that has only recently emerged from the Cold War. Added to this are the suspicions that Hongyi's courageous protest could be exploited and exploited by political opponents.

(Featured image from the Bangkok Post newspaper // Photo credits Bangkok Post)

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