Cool response in China for Greta Thunberg’s global warming speech at UN’s Climate Action Summit
- Chinese young people prefer tree planting and other activities to street protests
China’s online community was largely unmoved by 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg’s emotional message to the UN’s Climate Action Summit in New York this week.
Thunberg, a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, criticised world leaders for failing to take action on climate change. “How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” she said at the UN meeting on Monday.
Thunberg on Wednesday won the Right Livelihood Award – sometimes called the alternative Nobel – for “inspiring and amplifying political demands for urgent climate action reflecting scientific facts”, according to the Swedish Right Livelihood Foundation.
But while she was lauded by most of the world, Thunberg’s achievements – which included founding the Youth Strike for Climate movement and inspiring millions of people to join last Friday’s global climate strike – did not win majority support in mainland China.
“She is a poor girl kidnapped by the thought of white leftists and she herself doesn’t know that,” wrote one user on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging platform.