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Following last year's anti PX factory protests in Xiamen in June and the anti Maglev protests in Shanghai earlier this year, residents of Chengdu in Sichuan Province took to the streets last weekend. From The New York Times:
Residents took to the streets of a provincial capital over the weekend to protest a multibillion-dollar petrochemical plant backed by China’s leading state-run oil company, in the latest instance of popular discontent over an environmental threat in a major city.
The protest, against a $5.5 billion ethylene plant under construction by PetroChina in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, reflected a surge in environmental awareness by urban, middle-class Chinese determined to protect their health and the value of their property.
The recent protest, which was peaceful, was organized through Web sites, blogs and cellphone text messages, illustrating how some Chinese are using digital technology to start civic movements, which are usually banned by the police. Organizers also used text messages to publicize their cause nationally.
The protesters walked calmly through downtown Chengdu for several hours on Sunday afternoon to criticize the building of a combined ethylene plant and oil refinery in Pengzhou, 18 miles northwest of the city center. Some protesters wore white masks over their mouths to evoke the dangers of pollution. About 400 to 500 protesters took part in the march, witnesses said.
Organizers circumvented a national law that requires protesters to apply for a permit by saying they were only out for a “stroll.”
The use of the Internet and SMS, and the semantic game of calling the protest a "stroll" (散步) rather than a "demonstration" (游行) are both tactics used successfully by the Xiamen and Shanghai demonstrators. Also similar is the middle class, NIMBY (not in my backyard) nature of the protests.
Links and Sources
This article is from Danwei.org
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 Looking southeast towards Changping District and downtown Beijing from Hebei Yesterday Danwei relayed reports that Beijing's air quality was the worst so far this year, but the air is even worse today.
According to the State Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), today Beijing's API (Air Pollution Index) is 500, 79 points higher than yesterday, and more than 300 points higher than anything considered healthy. In fact, a U.S. government agency website says breathing in air with an API higher than 300 is "hazardous: Health warnings of emergency conditions. The entire population is more likely to be affected."
 Looking away from Beijing, northeast to Yanqing District The Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau (BJEPB) has released data for each district of Beijing including the outlying rural areas. You can clearly see the pollution bowl effect — Beijing is in a flat plain surrounded by mountains, and the bowl traps heat and air particles. For example, while Beijing's downtown API is 500 today, Yanqing is only 200.
This effect can also be seen in the photographs illustrating this post, taken earlier this week. This article is from Danwei.org
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 PX site in Haicang, Xiamen. This week the domestic media turned its eye once again to Xiamen. A hearing yesterday offered the public the chance to air their views on a paraxylene (PX) plant planned by the Xianglu Tenglong Group for the city's Haicang.
Following public outcry that culminated in an anti-PX march in June, an environmental assessment was ordered to determine the effect that the chemical plant would have on the surrounding area.
When the environmental report was made public last week, Xiamen Online launched a poll to measure the public's reaction to the study. The poll was closed the following day after 55,376 of 58,454 votes were cast against the project; the website said that it had neglected to screen for multiple votes cast from the same IP address, rendering the lopsided results invalid.
So this hearing offered a chance to hear a more reliable selection of opinions on the project. One hundred representatives were selected (fifty from the municipal People's Congress and Political Consultative Committee, and fifty from the general public); fifty-seven got a chance to speak yesterday. Forty-five of forty-nine public representatives opposed the project, as did seven of the eight government representatives who had time to speak.
Lian Yue, the columnist who was one of the major promoters of the anti-PX effort earlier this year, posted summaries of the comments of all the representatives who spoke. The Xianglu Tenglong Group's position (echoed by representative #13) was aired in an open letter published on its website yesterday. Xianglu sees itself as a responsible company, and the PX plant as a safe engineering project using the most advanced technology in the world. It also reminds Xiamen residents that a vinegary smell can be detected long before chemical levels reach national toxicity standards, so just because the plant smells bad doesn't mean that it is polluting. Nevertheless, it will completely eliminate that smell by the end of March, 2008. The letter concludes with a statement that the Haicang Paraxylene project can exist in complete harmony with Xiamen residents.
Most of the speakers took issue with various claims. Residents of Haicang District, where the project is located, described the polluted state of the environment. Even though the company says that it will resolve those air pollution problems by March, 2008, why hasn't it done so before? Can it be trusted with the safety of the Xiamen plant?
Other voices asked questions about the process itself—specifically, the participation of the government and the media. Will the goverment really follow through and enforce its own regulations if the project goes through? The process needs more transparency—why has Xiamen media been so quiet?
People raised the question of why a successful tourist city like Xiamen would want to expand its heavy industry—would the trade-off be worth it? One speaker noted that the PX project was in the flight path of a proposed airport, raising the possibility of a plane crash made more deadly by the chemicals released.
Representatives who supported the project suggested that the dangers were far overstated, the benefits to Xiamen would outweigh any potential problems, the jolt to the economy would keep housing prices down, and if all else failed, Xiamen could simply move people out of Haicang District.
The China Research Academy of Environmental Sciences noted that the decision ultimately rests with the city government, which has the power to designate the primary use of Haicang District on the city's master plan. If it chooses to make Haicang District a "petrochemical industrial district," the project can proceed. But if it decides to make the district a "secondary city center," then the PX project will have to be constructed elsewhere.
Most of the media was barred from attending due to space limitations, but local Xiamen media, along with Xinhua, People's Daily, and Guangming Daily, were admitted. Many other papers and websites cribbed their reports from China Daily's article (which was posted on the CD website in both a English and an Chinese version).
The Beijing News ran China Daily's information under the headline "Over half of Xiamen representatives oppose engineering project in Haicang". Only by reading the article did it become clear that opposing voices made up around 90% of those representatives who spoke.
Links and Sources
This article is from Danwei.org
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China Dialogue, the environmental issue website that posts all articles and user comments in both English and Chinese, has published a series of articles about carbon trading:
There is an introduction to the debate by Maryann Bird, an attack on the concept, titled The limits of free-market logic by Kevin Smith, and a defense of the practice by carbon trader Leigh Fitzgerald.
There also this news item: China continues to lead carbon market. Excerpt:
China has emerged for the second year running as the world leader in providing greenhouse gas emission credits, said experts from the World Bank on Thursday. This article is from Danwei.org
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Evan Osnos is the Beijing bureau chief of the Chicago Tribune. He recently won the Asia Society's Osborn Elliott Prize for distibguished journalism for a series of articles about China's Great Grab, subtitled 'how China's exploding appetite for natural resources is reshaping the world.
Below is a segment from the Colbert Report in which Stephen Colbert interviews Osnos about how America consumer demand for cheap cashmere is causing an explosion in goat populations in northwestern China, which in turn has caused soil erosion and huge clouds of dust which get blown across the Pacific.
Below is another interview with Osnos by someone from the Asia Society. Osnos talks about the state of foreign correspondence and explains some of the background behind his series of articles.
The China's Great Grab stories are:
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Beijing newspapers announced today that the city has issued an edict banning farmers from burning stalks and chaff. In recent days, the capital's customary clean air has been choked with smog that has drifted in from first-harvest field-burnings in the countryside.
But what are "dried stalks"? In Xinzheng City, Henan, a certain Mr. Wu was accosted on the street by two men as he tried to light a cigarette. They said they were from the town "anti-burning office" and demanded that he pay a fine of 500 yuan or they would confiscate his mobile phone. He managed to talk them down to 120 yuan, but they said he had to pay 2000 if he wanted a receipt.
Smog descends on Beijing and other cities every harvest, and it's usually urban residents who complain the loudest. But the problem is not exclusive to the cities. Columnist Chen She explains the issue in the Taizhou News, and suggests that regardless of how much official ink is spilled, the problem will not go away:
Our rural brothers are most practical. In the past when circumstances were poor, wheat and rice straw, along with weeds, were used as fuel for three meals a day, and the straw piles in front of every home were key to keeping the whole family, old and young, warm throughout all four seasons - no one would dare touch it. But today, the fuel of the past has become useless rubbish. What's the point in picking up every grain? And after you've picked it up, then what? Better to solve it with a single match, saving yourself trouble and fertilizing the field at the same time. Moreover, the family's labor is all out finding work elsewhere; taking a couple days off to hurry home for the harvest has them tired enough without taking the time to handle all that rubbish and care about "environmental protection."
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And it's not that our rural brothers are unafraid of regulations, either. Look at them over in Europe - who'd dare to light this fire? Take traffic rules, for example - even if you give their taxis a few dollars more, they won't violate the rules. Why? Their rules are strong and serious - whoever breaks them has it coming. Regardless of the reason, breaking the rules is most unprofitable. And us? Sometimes there are rules, and sometimes there aren't. When there aren't rules, you can't do anything, but when there are rules, you aren't necessarily able to do anything either. And about this straw burning, the greater part of China is shouting, year after year, but how many really effective rules are there? And I'm not the first to start burning - other people are burning, so why can't I? If other places can burn, why can't Taizhou? By the time you've issued a notice, I've already started burning - there's no fire engine, so there's nothing I can do. In addition, if I'm not burning when you come to inspect, can't I just wait until you've left and gotten off work to start? By next year, the next time you remember this stuff and issue another ban, I'll have already burnt things pretty well.
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And our rural brothers are also worried about the smoke. Urban residents cry that it's too smoky to bear, kids can't open their eyes when going to school and collide with people on their bikes, and they can't open their windows when they go to sleep at night. The environmental departments announce that air pollution is serious and the environment is in dire straits....I know all of this. The fields are much closer to our homes than to the city - it's a "serious disaster area" - young and old people in a family can't take the smoke, but what is there to do?
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Of course, no matter what, you can be comforted on one point: our rural brothers are concerned about the bigger picture. If the higher-ups send someone down to check and inspect an "environmental city," a "healthy city," or a "civilized city," or at critical times like the college or high-school entrance exams, we can guarantee that we will not burn a single stem of wheat straw, rice straw, or weeds, to ensure that there's no smoke anywhere under heaven. We'll have patience to wait until the inspection teams leave satisfied, the test-takers are released from their burdens, and you've let out a sigh of relief, and then we'll seize the opportunity to have a several-day burn.
Links and Sources
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China Dialogue, the bilingual website that aims to encourage discussion about the environment in China and abroad, has a new project called Cooler Living. It's an internet forum specifically aimed at younger readers. As with all the other content on China Dialogue, everything including reader comments is published in its original language together with a translation into either English or Chinese.
Also on China Dialogue right now is an interview by Isabel Hilton with Jonathon Porritt: Sustainable development’s “taboo territory”. The article examines the question — Can poor nations be expected to do change their consumption and development patterns? Excerpt:
Right now, the only thing you can say is: “consume much more intelligently,” because this is an appeal to the idea that China ought to be able to build a new paradigm of consumption, which doesn’t go through the massively wasteful, destructive and inefficient processes that we have been through in all western economies.
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