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This article seeks to analyze the representations of nature and the practices related to these representations in contemporary China. It is based on an anthropological research conducted in Guangzhou, capital of the Guangdong province, a city rather opened to outside influences due to its proximity with Hong Kong and therefore rather less affected by the control of the party-state than the rest of the country. The author shows how small groups of environmentalists appear, and study the political relations that develop from this new tropism. Between the control of the party-state and the subversive logic that underlie the very idea of nature conservation, a very diverse rank of attitudes and conceptions showing the entrance of China into a global world can be grasped.