• The Blue Map transformed scattered environmental records into one main database, allowing for easy public access to data.
• The Blue Map has expanded nationally, now covering millions of enforcement records, pollution data from over 40,000 factories, and environmental data across all 31 Chinese provinces.
• The initiative helped reduce corporate violations indirectly, but its reliance on official government data limits its impact.

Why is Ma Jun HOT?

Answer: Ma Jun’s Blue Map consolidated China’s environmental records into one platform, making pollution violations across the country visible to citizens.

For decades, China’s environmental information was scattered across government records, making it difficult for citizens to understand the country’s pollution problems or identify the companies responsible. To address this, Ma Jun founded the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE), a Chinese environmental NGO, in 2006. Building on this, in 2014, it launched the Blue Map.

The Blue Map is a public digital platform that brings together different types of environmental data across China into one place. It is available on the IPE’s website and as a mobile application. Instead of searching through various government records, through the Blue Map, users can access information on air and water quality, industrial emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, and companies’ environmental violations within China through a single platform. The platform allows citizens to gain knowledge of local violations and also to report suspected ones.

Ma Jun wanted the Blue Map to achieve two main objectives. First, he wanted to make environmental information understandable and accessible. Second, he wanted citizens to expose polluting companies so that they improve their environmental performance in response to public scrutiny. The Blue Map’s expansion, widespread use, and indirect contribution to reducing pollution show that these objectives have largely been achieved.

Since its launch, the platform has expanded significantly. It initially included 2,000 polluting enterprises but now contains more than 2.9 million enforcement records. Through the Blue Map, people can check the air quality across 300 cities and have access to real-time pollution data from over 40,000 factories. The Blue Map has collected information on pollutant emissions in all 31 Chinese provinces. The application has been downloaded more than 10 million times, and companies such as Huawei use its data to monitor their suppliers. 

The Blue Map has contributed to reductions in corporate environmental violations through IPE initiatives that rely on its data. IPE’s Green Supply Chain Initiative (GSCI) uses Blue Map records to identify environmental violations among multinational companies’ suppliers and asks participating companies to push them to take corrective action. Since its development, companies have utilised Blue Map data to push 20,000 suppliers to disclose or address their emission violations. In addition, over 14,000 audits have been conducted to verify corrective action. Therefore, while there is limited evidence on the extent to which the Blue Map reduces pollution on its own, it has indirectly contributed to better corporate environmental performance by enabling initiatives like the GSCI.

What is changing Ma Jun’s heat level?

Answer: Ma Jun’s Blue Map succeeded through cooperation with the Chinese government, but its reliance on government data also limits its impact.

The Blue Map became one of China’s most influential environmental transparency platforms because of two factors. Firstly, Ma Jun worked with, rather than against, the Chinese government. Secondly, he capitalised on the country’s expanding environmental disclosure policies.

Rather than collecting pollution data independently or publicly exposing perceived government failures, the IPE relied on officially published data. This enabled the IPE to operate and grow its influence without facing political restrictions. China’s political system makes cooperation with state authorities essential for the effective operation of environmental NGOs. Organisations perceived as politically sensitive or reliant on foreign funding have faced restrictions, such as internet censorship, difficulties registering or renewing their registration, and in some cases, forced closure.

The IPE’s decision not to conduct independent investigations or rely on significant foreign funding allowed it to avoid these restrictions. As a result, it came to be seen as a partner rather than a challenger to the state. In 2019, Ma Jun was invited as a Special Observer by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), which reflects the trust the IPE had built through this cooperative approach.

Ma Jun’s decision to leverage the growing environmental disclosure requirements in China was the second driver of Blue Map’s success. When he founded the IPE in 2006, pollution records were available through hundreds of separate local government websites—technically public but practically inaccessible. The IPE Pollution Database, launched in 2006, solved this by centralizing these official records into a single searchable platform for the first time. 

Then, in 2013, China’s State Council issued the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan, which required major polluters to disclose their emissions data. This dramatically expanded the amount of official data available to the public. Ma Jun responded in 2014 by launching the Blue Map, integrating this growing volume of data into a citizen-facing app that made information immediately usable. 

In 2020, as China announced its commitment to carbon neutrality by 2060 and in 2021 the Ministry of Ecology and Environment introduced new corporate climate disclosure requirements, Ma Jun again adapted. He launched the Blue Map for Zero Carbon to extend the platform’s coverage into greenhouse gas emissions and corporations’ carbon footprints.

However, the Blue Map’s greatest strength is also its main limitation. Because the platform relies entirely on government data, it can only display environmental inspections, emissions data, and violation records that national and local authorities choose to publish. If inspections are delayed, violations go undetected, or environmental information is withheld from the public, the Blue Map cannot reveal these gaps. Although the central government has strengthened disclosure requirements, implementation varies across local authorities, which reduces the accuracy of what users see. strengthened disclosure requirements, implementation varies across local authorities. For example, in some cases, local governments warned factories before inspections.

The Blue Map’s digital nature also limits its reach. China has experienced rapid digitalisation, with internet penetration exceeding 78% of the population by 2024. However, access remains uneven: internet penetration is over 85% in urban areas but only around 69% in rural areas. As a result, although the Blue Map has been downloaded more than 10 million times, its use might be concentrated in digitally connected urban communities.

What is driving Ma Jun?

Answer: Ma Jun is driven by the belief that public access to environmental information is the missing tool for holding polluters accountable in China.

Ma Jun was driven to found the IPE and develop the Blue Map by two connected beliefs: that China’s environmental crisis required action and that people needed access to information before they could push for change.

His determination to address environmental degradation emerged during his years as a journalist for the South China Morning Post in the 1990s. Traveling across China, he returned to habitats he remembered as pristine from his childhood and found degraded environmental conditions that made the scale of the crisis impossible to ignore.

At the Three Gorges Dam in 1994, he found deforestation and a polluted river where construction had stripped the landscape bare. On the Fen River in Shanxi, he watched streams of chemicals pour out of different factory towns—each color representing a different industry—all draining into the Yellow River. He later met the chief engineer of the Yellow River Commission, who described the dam projects as a triumph of Chinese development, while the river itself ran dry for months of the year. The contrast between the official narrative of progress and the environmental reality Ma Jun had seen with his own eyes became the defining tension of his entire career.

These experiences convinced Ma Jun that China’s environmental crisis stemmed not from a lack of regulations but from polluters’ lack of incentive to comply. His later research led him to see public access to environmental information as a way to address this gap. In 2004, he joined the Yale World Fellows Program, where he conducted comparative research on Western environmental governance systems.

He observed that in Europe and North America, polluters were forced to clean up by governments that passed and enforced laws—backed by a public that could access information about what was being pumped into their air and water. To Ma, in China, that link between information and accountability was missing entirely. As he later put it directly: “When I look at China’s environmental problems, the real barrier is not lack of technology or money. It’s a lack of motivation.”

Chinese publishers refused the next book he wrote on the subject, telling him it went “a bit too far.” He decided to build a living information system instead and founded the IPE in 2006.

What does this mean for you?

Answer: There is no single right strategy for climate action; sometimes the quieter path is the more effective one, depending on the political system.

Ma Jun’s approach shows that compromising with the political system one operates in, rather than confronting it, is sometimes the most effective path to environmental action. In China, challenging state authority directly is not viable for a civil society organisation. Green Watershed, a Chinese NGO that opposed state-backed dam projects on the Nu River, illustrates this. Its founder, Yu Xiaogang, faced a travel ban and police surveillance, and the organisation struggled to renew its operating permit. 

Ma Jun understood this and described his method as a kind of acupuncture: rather than pressing on the government directly, he presses on companies through public data, and that pressure travels outward. This results in companies adopting better environmental practices without the IPE ever confronting the state.

IE x RAIA Summer Research Programme

This article is an excerpt from a report on Ma Jun produced as part of a RAIA research programme on climate leaders. For a full picture of Ma Jun’s climate leadership, including the sources, read the full report. This project was fully financed by IE University’s School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs and School of Science and Technology.
Authors: Sami Kayani Mahmood Kausar, Viktoria Vekova & Daniela Bermudez Bolivar
Editor: Réka Baranyai
Project Lead: Dario Hasenstab