Abstract: The localized Chinese environmental protection movement can be viewed as the most popular campaign in China, not only responding to the green politics and the social trend of ecological movement abroad but also pushed and developed by the middleclass elites and environmentalists at home under the background of transformational development in a deteriorated environment. NGOs have played a decisive organizational part in resource mobilization and organization in a series of recent environmentalist campaigns in China, exemplified by the FightAgainstDam Campaign in Nujiang and JinshaJiang River Public Environmental Welfare Rights Movement. The appearance of such campaigns reveals that ecoenvironment has become a vital factor for the Chinese social progress. In the current context, the Chinese environmentalprotection movement is able to seek opportunities for interaction and partnership relationship with the government, thus obtaining its legitimacy and international resources. However, it still is in need of social, political, economic, and cultural support and lags behind in comparison with developed countries in many aspects. This is particularly true under a thinking mode characterized by 'control' and 'regulation', as such campaigns inevitably confront resistance from the inertial of the traditional development mode, obstruction from 'the privileged social class', limitations of immature citizens, and dilemma of discourse discrepancy as well. Notwithstanding, movements alike still serve as essential bidirectional democratic power in balancing institutionalized control from the government and uninstitutionalized influence from civil, no matter it is topdown or bottomup.

Key words: environmental protection, social movement, resource mobilization, capacity to act, system