Howey Ou, China’s version of Greta Thunberg, pays price for climate activism
- They’re both 17, and she looks to the Swede for inspiration, but in China Ou has had run-ins with the authorities and been barred from her school
- Still, she hopes to stay in the country and build a grass-roots environmental movement, with some tactics adapted to a Chinese context
Ou came to prominence last year after she skipped classes for a week to protest in front of the local government office in her hometown of Guilin in southern China. She held up a poster asking citizens to join her in a strike to highlight climate change. Her protest went viral on social media, inside and outside China.
For that, Ou says she has now been barred from returning to school. Her high school refuses to allow her to re-enrol out of fears that her activism will generate trouble with the authorities, according to Ou. Calls to the school for comment were not picked up.
“I wanted to go back to school to use it as a platform for my activism,” Ou said in an interview, adding she once tried to get plastic tableware banned from the school canteen.
Ou sees herself as part of a growing global community of young climate activists, heralded by the rise of Swedish environmentalist Greta Thunberg, who is the same age as Ou. Thunberg gained fame in 2018 after boycotting classes for three weeks to protest outside the Swedish parliament. Many of Ou’s initiatives were taken from Thunberg’s playbook and she looks to the Swede for inspiration.