Xiao Wang, a business school sophomore, has devoted his winter vacation studying pollution in his hometown, a small village in the southeastern China province of Fujian.

"Rapid industrial growth in recent years has polluted rural air and water, though it has produced more jobs and raised village living standards," he said. "The pollution will hinder local economic development in the long run if no action is taken immediately."

Xiao Wang said he was drafting a thesis on this issue. "I hope my thesis will be published and arouse attention of the local government and the public."

As head of the students' association, Xiao Wang has organized several environmental protection campaigns at school. "My biggest achievement is that my schoolmates are more keen on environmental issues and many of them have moved to raise awareness of the issue among their friends, relatives and fellow towns folk."

Students had been in the vanguard of the nationwide environmental protection campaign since the 1990s, said an official with the Fujian provincial environmental protection bureau.

"They've worked hard to safeguard the ecological environment themselves and persuade others to do the same," said Huang Miaoyun, who is in charge of publicity work at the bureau.

Nearly all Chinese colleges and universities have launched special websites calling on the netizens to protect the environment by using green energy, recycling water and other resources, and disposing of garbage in a more rational way.

On its website at www.cngreen.org, the student-run environment body of the Southwest University of Science and Technology has called on the students to use recycled paper, refuse foam lunch boxes and throwaway chopsticks, categorize waste and send used batteries to a recycling center on campus for a centralized and proper disposal.

"Recycle" is a popular word at Beijing Forestry University. Since 1997, the university has encouraged its students to sell used books, stationery and any other old materials, and donate their earnings to needy students in poorer regions.

Students at Harbin Institute of Technology have set up a "spoon society" to advocate use of spoons, rather than throw-away chopsticks, at school canteens.

Of the 2,000 odd non-governmental environmental organizations on China's mainland, over a half are run by college students, sources say.

The "Green Camp of University Students" program by China Nature magazine has drawn several thousand college students since it was launched in 1996. They have traveled to nearly every corner of the country to study varied environmental issues.

The program was awarded first prize in 2002 in the Ford Motors Conservation and Environmental Grants, one of the world's largest environmental grant schemes offering awards in more than 50 countries and regions.

Of the 11 winners of a national environmental protection award, the Mother River Award, in 2002, two were college students.

In China, over 200 colleges and universities have opened an environment engineering department, and many others have included environment related subjects in their curricula.

"As a future generation of policy-makers, students have yet a larger role to play in safeguarding the environment," said Huang.

Early in 2004, several environmental bodies started to offer small loans to encourage college students to launch more environmental projects, said Pan Yue, deputy director of State Environmental Protection Administration.

(Xinhua News Agency February 2, 2004)