After graduating from
Sun Yat-sen University in 1986, Liao taught philosophy as a researcher at the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, where she first gained an interest in environmental philosophy. She began to read environmentalist works and film documentaries on China's ecological plight that appeared on
China Central Television. She then served as a visiting scholar at the
University of North Carolina, where she claims to have first discovered the role that civil society can play in environmentalism. She returned to China in 1996 and founded the non-government organization
Global Village of Beijing. ==See also==