China’s environment ministry acknowledged that the dam would have an impact on the area’s highly biodiverse flora and fauna.

“The project will affect the spawning and movement of rare fish species, as well as the growth of endangered plants, including the Chinese yew, which is under first-class state protection,” the ministry said, according to Xinhua.

The ministry proposed counter-measures to mitigate the environmental impact, such as “protecting fish habitats in tributaries, building fish ladders and increasing fish breeding and releasing”, Xinhua reported. The project is still awaiting a final go-ahead from China’s state council. [Source]

Reuters’ David Stanway notes that state power firm Guodian, a subsidiary of which will build the new Shuangjiangkou dam, has previously faced criticism from the government for starting work on projects before receiving final approval.

Large-scale hydropower is central to Beijing’s plans for greater use of fossil fuel alternatives. It faces strong and widespread opposition, however, because of its impact on communities, plants and wildlife, to say nothing of accusations that it can increase the risk of landslides and earthquakes. Another currently contentious hydropower project is the long-delayed series of dams on the upper Nu (or Salween) River. For more on the Nu dams and related environmental issues, see ‘Dams & Deforestation: Yunnan’s Water Woes‘ at CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dams, electricity, hydroelectricity, Hydropower, rivers, Sichuan, wildlife preservation, Yangtze
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Justice Gate sits at the intersection of Renmin Road (People’s Road) one of Kunming’s busiest thoroughfares. Large shopping malls sit across the intersection and a pedestrian commercial street leads to the site of the 5/4 protest. The police forces were lax in allowing the group to migrate southward to the gate, after all, it led the protest away from the government headquarters, but they were determined to not allow the crowd to shut down traffic at the Renmin Road. A human wall of police officers five-thick formed to prevent the mass from breaking through the gate. Underneath the shade of the great oak trees, the protester’s energy seemed to stall out. New tactics like singing the Chinese national anthem with the words “Rise Up! Rise Up!” “Forward on! Forward on!” reinvigorated the group. Elderly women sang Red Songs from revolutions soon to be forgotten. Outside of the gate, the blazing sun lighting up the intersection provided contrast to the shaded area occupied by the protesters.

It was at this moment that the movement changed. No longer were anti-PX slogans being shouted – the crowd shifted to “Oil Refinery Get out of Kunming!” Over and over. One woman shouted in Kunming’s local dialect, “Rise up Kunmingers! Rise up Yunnanese!” and the mass movement discovered a new slogan that hit very close to home. A new file of police rushed to prevent protesters from breaking out into the square, but their efforts were of no use. At 12:00pm the protesters broke through the police wall and shut down the busy intersection. Traffic going both ways on busy Renmin road reached a standstill. Storefront owners rushed out to see what was going on. Crowds gathered on shopping mall balconies to cheer on protesters and take photos. The movement had emerged from the darkness into the light and gathered new steam.

An article in the Guardian looks at the demonstrations as part of a rising tide of environmental protest in China:

The Chinese public are becoming increasing concerned about the state of their local environment and up to 80% believe that environmental protection should be a higher priority than economic development, according to a new survey. The survey, carried out by the Public Opinion Research Centre in collaboration with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, measured the public’s attitudes towards environmental protection and how they rate the government’s performance.

Such protests appear to be often tolerated by the authorities and, like the Shanghai protests, are sometimes successful in their goals. Last October, a week-long series of protests in Ningbo in eastern China by thousands of residents was sucessful in stopping work on an oil and petrochemical complex.

The frequency of protests is rising as China’s increasingly affluent and middle-class society becomes more aware of environmental issues. The number of environmental protests rose by 120% from 2010 to 2011, according to Yang Chaofei, the vice-chairman of the Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences.

Yang a told a lecture organised by the Standing Committee of the National’s People’s Congress on the social impact of environmental problems that the number of environmental ‘mass incidents’ has grown an average of 29% annually from 1996 to 2011. He said that the number of incidents which involve concerns about dangerous chemicals and heavy metal pollution have risen since 2010. [Source]

Read more about the Kunming protests via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: environmental activism, environmental protests, Kunming PX
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The United Nations health agency said a written statement on Friday that the four deaths were from cases that had already been identified in laboratories.

It said here had been no new cases of infection with H7N9 Since May 8.

The WHO reiterated that there was no evidence that the new strain of bird flu, which was first detected in patients in China in March, was passing easily from human to human. If such a feature emerged it could spark a pandemic.

But it said: “Until the source of infection has been identified and controlled, it is expected that there will be further cases of human infection with the virus.” [Source]

Fears that the virus would morph into a global pandemic have eased as hospitals around the country have seen fewer new cases. From Quartz:

The passing of the crisis would be good news not just for Chinese citizens. Epidemiologists have long worried that bird flu could morph into a virus contagious between humans, which could give rise to a global pandemic. Experts at the World Health Organization (WHO) and other institutions have said that the possibility of human-to-human transmission in China’s recent outbreak is not confirmed but can’t be ruled out either. A total of 131 people in China have caught H7N9, and 36 people have died from it, according to the WHO.

But shutting down live poultry markets across the country seems to have slowed the outbreak’s spread. Warmer temperatures may also be helping. Zhejiang health officials said there have been no new cases of the virus over the past 28 days. They have also now released dozens of people who were being examined because of their contact with H7N9 patients in the province. [Source]

As fears have dissipated and with the help of government subsidies to the hard-hit poultry industry, the price of chicken is on the rise, according to People’s Daily:

The price per kilo of dressed chicken hit 13.51 yuan (2.18 U.S. dollars) on May 15, up from an annual low of 12.97 yuan on May 12, but the figure was still 4.2 percent lower than the same time last year, according to data from MOA.

The number of transactions in the poultry sector from May 6 to May 12 increased 25.6 percent from the equivalent period in April, but they were still down 67.2 percent year on year, the data showed.

The price rebound is the result of central government subsidy initiatives that involved pumping 600 million yuan into major poultry-processing companies and breeders nationwide to stabilize the industry, said Bi Meijia, MOA chief economist. [Source]

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bird flu, food prices, H7N9, public health
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Protesters in Kunming. View more photos from today’s events at CDT Chinese. (@明明悠阳)

Central Propaganda Department: Without exception, do not republish, report, or comment on the assembly of the masses in Kunming to protest the construction of a PetroChina oil refinery.

中宣部：对昆明群众反对中石油云南炼油项目聚集一事，一律不转不报不评。

State Internet Information Office: All websites are asked to remove text, images, and video related to the protest of over 1,000 people in Kunming city center against the Anning PX construction plan. Interactive platforms must strictly monitor activity. (May 16, 2013)

网信办：请各网站删除关于昆明上千市民聚集市中心抗议安宁PX项目的文字、图片、视频等相关信息。互动环节要严格把关。

CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date on CDT Chinese is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, environmental protests, Internet censorship, Kunming, media censorship, Ministry of Truth, propaganda, protests, Yunnan
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The protest crowds Thursday were estimated to number as many as 2,500. Scores of uniformed and riot police looked on and sometimes scuffled with demonstrators, according to photos taken at the scene and comments posted on China’s social media. The rally was mostly peaceful but did not disperse until early evening, shortly after the mayor appeared and addressed the protesters.

Kunming officials have said that the refinery project by the state-owned giant China National Petroleum Corp. will meet environmental standards, but the city and company have refused to make public the environmental impact report.

Residents fear that the plant will pollute the area’s air and water, as well as produce large amounts of paraxylene, a carcinogenic chemical.

The march in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, is the latest in a string of protests in China over worries about the environmental and health costs of development. [Source]

The lack of transparent information about the project has been a primary complaint of protesters. Officials have stated that paraxylene (PX) will not be used at the refinery, but protesters are distrustful of the government without seeing the environmental impact report. Domestic media has also been ordered not to conduct independent reporting on the project, according to a recent directive from the Central Propaganda Department. From CNN:

Several days after a May 4 protest, the Kunming mayor joined executives from the state China National Petroleum Corp. and the Yuntianhua Group for a joint news conference.

“The government will call off the project if most of our citizens say no to it,” said Mayor Li Wenrong, according to Xinhua.

The provincial general manager of China National Petroleum Corp. has said the refinery will not use the chemical.

“The project has no PX facilities, nor will it produce PX products,” Hu Jingke said, according to Xinhua.

Kunming residents expressed deep distrust of government officials and the state-owned enterprises behind the refinery project. [Source]

Al Jazeera reports on the skepticism many protesters feel toward the government’s claim:

Government officials said earlier in the week that the project, being built by the powerful state company PetroChina, would meet environmental standards and was crucial to the local economy.

However, local people remain worried that the refinery, which is expected to produce up to 10 million tonnes of refined oil annually, will pollute the air and water.

[...] He Bo, a deputy with the city government, appeared at the scene and tried to reach out to protesters, inviting them for a discussion with the government.

But the official, who was followed by state media cameras, failed to find representatives of the demonstrators who were willing to talk.

He finally gave up and abandoned the scene, escorted by security agents. [Source]

The refinery is being built largely to process oil transported through a new pipeline running from Myanmar to Yunnan. These protests fit a pattern of recent citizen actions against potential pollution from large-scale industrial projects in Chinese cities. Large protests have erupted against chemical processing facilities in Dalian, Xiamen, and Shifang, Sichuan, to name just a few. In the recent issue of Dissent Magazine, Jeffrey Wasserstrom interviews Duke University anthropologist Ralph Litzinger about the upsurge in environmental activism in China in recent years and specifically about the protests in Kunming on May 4 over the planned oil refinery:

JW: One of the most recent—maybe the most recent—NIMBY protest was in Kunming, a city I know you spent a lot of time in and that I remember from my one visit there in 1987 as an unusually beautiful and slow-paced place. I realize I’ll be in a shock if I return there, since I’ve heard it has grown exponentially in recent years and no longer has the same feel of being largely untouched by the harsher aspects of urban life. What’s your take on how the city’s changed and how this recent protests fits into the picture?

RL: Kunming is indeed a place very close to my heart. I first visited Kunming in 1990. As with many cities in China, the changes there are astonishing. Frankly, some of the development has been, to my mind, misguided, if only because Kunming now looks and feels like just another generic city on development steroids. Satellite cities are popping up all around Kunming, and many of these are sites for planned chemical factories, petrochemical plants, and other industrial manufacturing operations. On the one hand, we can argue that the protests in Kunming, meant to coincide with the May Fourth anniversary (one of the most hallowed days on the Chinese political calendar, commemorating as it does a patriotic 1919 Beijing demonstration that launched a nation-wide mass movement), are evidence of a growing consciousness, seen in other cities, about industrial pollution, chemical runoff into watersheds and rivers, and the environmental and health effects of tin and copper and other heavy mental mining. [Source]

The protests are galvanized by social media, where residents share information and protest plans. Photos and reports of the protest also spread in real-time via weibo and Twitter. A CDT reader and Kunming native sent us the following photos, which she received from friends in Kunming via WeChat (Weixin). Protesters are increasingly sharing information on the WeChat cell phone messaging application to avoid the censorship on weibo and in the media:

Read more about environmental activism, including anti-PX protests in Dalian and Xiamen, via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: environmental activism, environmental protests, industrial pollution, Kunming, Kunming PX
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Hundreds of people have gathered near the Yunnan provincial government’s seat to protest against the construction of a petrochemical refinery and a related paraxylene (PX) plant in Anning near the province’s capital Kunming.

Traffic has been blocked by the protest one block away from the government’s seat and rows of police have cordoned off the block.

The number of protesters is still increasing as people stuck on public buses and cars are joining, the South China Morning Post’s Li Jing reports from the scene of the protest. [Source]

On Twitter, witnesses, notably @aikunming, posted live updates as well:

#AntiPX #Kunming this protest is on the move folks. Marched south to 牌楼。security not allowing protesters to march on or thru 人民中路

— @aikunming May 16, 2013

#AntiPX #Kunming crowd larger than 1000

— @aikunming May 16, 2013

#AntiPX #Kunming protest started @ten with immediate arrest of 1.Protesters tried 2 stop police van taking away arrested. Shut down street.

— @aikunming May 16, 2013

#AntiPX #Kunming protesters try to break police lines. twitter.com/aikunming/stat…

— @aikunming May 16, 2013

#AntiPX #Kunming traffic resumes at snails pace via traffic control.Old ladies cursing plain clothes cops.

— @aikunming May 16, 2013

#AntiPX #Kunming multiple protest zones now. Perhaps effective divider conquer by police. 1000 in interesection 1000 north of intersection.

— @aikunming May 16, 2013

#AntiPX #Kunming twitter.com/aikunming/stat…

— @aikunming May 16, 2013

“Democracy! It is beginning” reads a banner at the #Kunming environmental protest. scmp.com/news/china/art… #AntiPX

— Patrick Boehler (@MrBaoPanrui) May 16, 2013

#AntiPX #Kunming new view. Protesters return to orig site. Numbers dwindle. twitter.com/aikunming/stat…

— @aikunming May 16, 2013

#AntiPX #Kunming thanks for tuning in. Protests last forever but unfortunately iPhone batteries do not. Until next time…

— @aikunming May 16, 2013

Read about the related protest on May 4.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: environmental protests, industrial pollution, Kunming, Kunming PX
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Central Propaganda Department: Tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of the Wenchuan earthquake. Please ensure that you strictly comply with the related reporting requests distributed earlier. Maintain positive coverage. Do not produce negative or sensational material. Do not produce reflections on so-called aftereffects. Increase checking of commentary. The leadership of media organizations are asked to personally examine all work. (May 11, 2013)

中宣部：明天是汶川地震五周年，请各媒体严格按此前下发的有关报道要求把好关，要坚持正面报道，不作负面炒作，不作对所谓后遗症的反思，加强对评论的把关，请各媒体主要领导亲自把关工作。

The “aftereffects” of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which claimed about 70,000 lives, likely refers to concerns that dams and reservoirs have caused seismic activity. Zhang Hongtao, chief engineer of the Ministry of Land and Resources, called the 2010 mudslide in Gansu Province an “aftereffect” of geological changes wrought by the Wenchuan earthquake [zh]. The Zipingpu Reservoir may have contributed to the 2008 quake, as well as the 6.6 magnitude quake that hit Sichuan last month.

CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date on CDT Chinese is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2008 Sichuan earthquake, 2013 Sichuan earthquake, censorship, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, media censorship, Ministry of Truth, propaganda, Wenchuan
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Until recently studies of the Third Pole were piecemeal—not surprising, given its remoteness, the altitude, the harsh weather and the fact that little love is lost between the countries among which it is divided. In 2009, however, Yao Tandong of the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, in Beijing, Lonnie Thompson of the Ohio State University and Volker Mosbrugger of the Senckenberg World of Biodiversity, in Frankfurt, started an international programme involving these countries, called the Third Pole Environment (TPE). Last month, its fourth workshop met in Dehradun, India.

[…] One outcome of the workshop […] has been to establish that the overall ice cover of the Third Pole, like that of the two real poles, is shrinking. Another is to show how precarious and piecemeal data about the area are. Its role as the source of so many rivers means that absence of data matters. The Chinese Academy of Sciences, of which both Dr Yao’s and Dr Wu’s institutes are part, has therefore set up a fund of 400m yuan ($65m) for research on the Third Pole and, crucially, a quarter of this is earmarked for work outside China. [Source]

At Tea Leaf Nation (via CDT), Hongxiang Huang reported this week that scrutiny of environmental issues in Tibet is often affected by the region’s political sensitivity. For more information on the Third Pole, see thethirdpole.net, an offshoot of chinadialogue.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chinese Academy of Science, climate change, glaciers, global warming, Himalayas, Tibet, Tibet environment
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

“No Kunming PX.” (via FreeWeibo)

The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online.

Central Propaganda Department: With regards to the China National Petroleum Corp. oil refinery planned for Anning, Yunnan Province, report in strict accordance with Xinhua wire copy or authoritative information formally issued by the local government in the region. Do not speculate, do not comment, and do not send reports to investigate. (May 8, 2013)

中宣部：对云南安宁中石油炼油项目相关问题，严格按新华社通稿，或当地政府正式发布的权威消息报道，不炒作、不评论，不派记者到当地采访。

On Saturday, residents of Kunming, the capital of southwestern Yunnan Province, protested construction of an oil refinery in nearby Anning. The plant would process the hazardous chemical p-Xylene (PX). While the protests were peaceful and unhindered by the police, the future of the project remains uncertain.

CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date on CDT Chinese is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, environmental protests, Kunming PX, Ministry of Truth, propaganda, protests, PX
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Here in Bingzhongluo, a peaceful backpacker magnet, those who treasure the fast-moving, jade-green beauty of the Nu say the four proposed dams in Yunnan and the one already under construction in Tibet would irrevocably alter what guidebooks refer to as the Grand Canyon of the East. A soaring, 370-mile-long gorge carpeted with thick forests, the area is home to roughly half of China’s animal species, many of them endangered, including the snow leopard, the black snub-nosed monkey and the red panda.

Clinging improbably to the alpine peaks are mist-shrouded villages whose residents are among the area’s dozen or so indigenous tribes, most with their own languages. “The project will be good for the local government, but it will be a disaster for the local residents,” said Wan Li, 42, who in 2003 left behind his big-city life as an accountant in the provincial capital, Kunming, to open a youth hostel here. “They will lose their culture, their traditions and their livelihood, and we will be left with a placid, lifeless reservoir.”

As one of two major rivers in China still unimpeded by dams, the Nu has a fiercely devoted following among environmentalists who have grown despondent over the destruction of many of China’s waterways. The Ministry of Water Resources released a survey in March saying that 23,000 rivers had disappeared entirely and many of the nation’s most storied rivers had become degraded by pollution. The mouth of the Yellow River is little more than an effluent-fouled trickle, and the once-mighty Yangtze has been tamed by the Three Gorges Dam, a $25 billion project that displaced 1.4 million people.

For many advocates, the Nu has become something of a last stand. “Why can’t China have just one river that isn’t destroyed by humans?” asked Wang Yongchen, a well-known environmentalist in Beijing who has visited the area a dozen times in recent years.

At The Atlantic, Angel Hsu and William Miao recently scrutinized official explanations for the thousands of river disappearances: that some of the rivers only ever existed on inaccurate old maps, and that others have dried up because of climate change.

“As China’s population and economy have rapidly grown, the country has experienced serious degradation of its water resources, including massive overuse and contamination,” Gleick said. “The ‘disappearance’ of major rivers and streams is far more likely to be directly connected to uncontrolled and unsustainable extraction of water for industry and agriculture, though climate change may play a greater role in the future.”

[…] What about the statistical discrepancies that the government says could have factored in to the rivers’ disappearance? While some updates to river classification are plausible, cartography and mapping techniques have been very sophisticated in China for many years. One user on Sina Weibo tweeted an old map of waterways for Qingdao, showing abundant waterways in considerable detail. The maps are accurate and Qingdao’s rivers have not been wiped away by “improved surveying methods” — they have simply been converted into Qingdao’s sprawling roadways, said one of the city’s urban historians.

So why is the Chinese government blaming only climate change and statistical inaccuracies? Climate change is an easy and popular scapegoat and allows the government to save face by pinning the disappearance on natural causes rather than anthropogenic (and arguably preventable) ones.

Quoting former water resources minister Wang Shucheng, Jacobs notes that the Nu river dams reflect a “fight for every drop or die” attitude towards water management. As a region once regarded as a reliable water source becomes increasingly prone to drought, Yunnan’s deputy Party secretary Qiu He argued at the National People’s Congress in March that the province needed more hydroengineering to help regulate its water supply. But Yang Fangyi and Zhou Jiading argue at chinadialogue that this function is best fulfilled naturally, by forests:

If you look at the amount of precipitation in Yunnan, you might struggle to understand how the province could be hit by drought. The monsoons bring plenty of rain during a distinct wet season. However, thanks to the province’s geography, that rain falls unevenly. Some south-western areas can see as much as 3,000 millimetres of rain a year, while arid valleys might have less than 500 millimetres.

So climate and geography result in an uneven distribution of water, and therefore shortages during the dry season. Normally, Yunnan’s forests and wetlands regulate this imbalance, acting as sponges that soak up water during the monsoons and gradually release it. Millions of people in Yunnan benefit, including those living downstream of Yunnan’s six major rivers – in the Yangtze and Pearl River basins, for example.

But the continued drought is a warning of the damage being done to those ecosystems.

Yunnan is heavily-forested. But the original forests, able to store and regulate water, have virtually been destroyed. Serious environmental damage has been done.

Though 53% of the province is still covered with forest, Greenpeace estimates that only 9% of this is original growth. Yunnan has seen an enormous expansion of monocultural commercial forests of eucalyptus, fir and especially rubber, which lack the water-regulating capabilities of the old forests. In addition, rubber trees require more water for themselves, and their cultivation involves the use of chemicals that contaminate what remains. As Chris Horton writes at The Atlantic, Yunnan’s rubber boom has brought new prosperity to local farmers, but may be sowing the seeds of its own collapse:

By 2010, more than 22 percent of Xishuangbanna [whose forests are cited by Yang and Zhou as exceptionally well protected] was rubber farms, a calculation that doesn’t account for the crop’s intrusion into the Xishuangbanna and Nanbanhe Nature Reserves, which Grumbine described as “significant.” In sum, Grumbine, Xu and Beckschaefer’s findings show that Xishuangbanna’s rubber industry at present is anything but sustainable.

Rubber plantations sequester less carbon than natural forests and their spread has led to a substantial net release of carbon dioxide. Because after the first few years the plantations require chemical fertilizers that often contaminate nearby bodies of water, oxygen-sapping algae can bloom and kill off fish and other aquatic species. In addition, since rubber trees use more water than native vegetation or other crops, especially during the hot months of November through April, the area’s dry season is growing longer and both the number of foggy days and the amount of fog on those days is declining, affecting other agricultural production and regional food security.

The team’s paper concludes that if the local climate continues its hotter and drier trend, it could become unsuitable for growing rubber altogether, a development that would devastate the local economy.

Horton concludes with proposals to avert such a collapse by strategically restoring and preserving the natural forest. But attempting instead to regulate water with dams may remain attractive in the short-term, offering both its own economic boost and the hope that profitably unrestrained rubber farming can continue.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dams, dams resettlement, deforestation, droughts, forests, rivers, rubber, water crisis, Xishuangbanna, Yunnan
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

In early April, several satellite images were sent to Southern Weekly; the pictures suggested that the fatal landslide in a Tibetan mining site on March 29 — labeled a “natural disaster” — might be related to inappropriate and illegal operations. However, Southern Weekly did not pursue the matter further, believing that the evidence was “still not strong enough” for them to address such a sensitive topic, although several Chinese and international experts believed otherwise.

[…] While foreign media and NGOs are virtually banned from entering Tibet, domestic media and NGOs are also aware that they should stay out, or at least keep quiet even on environmental challenges in Tibet.

“Different parties, including both the Chinese government and overseas ‘human rights’ activists, always politicalize problems in Tibet, making real environmental challenges untouchable,” said Gao, an environmental NGO worker in western China.

Also see “Landslide Draws Attention to Toll of Mining on Tibet” for more information on mining operations in the area.

It is not only Tibet’s natural environment that is at risk from development. At South China Morning Post, Amy Li describes writer Woeser’s shock at changes to the Tibetan capital of Lhasa after a visit to her mother last year:

Once home, Woeser said she was astonished by both the scale and the nature of commercial developments going on in the ancient part of the Tibetan capital.

“Lhasa is being destroyed by excessive commercial development,” she wrote in the headline of a petition on Saturday that was quickly censored after it went viral on Weibo. […]

[…] “I therefore plead to Unesco and other international organisations, Tibetan scholars and experts, and all of you, please stop this horrible modernisation from committing unforgettable crimes to Lhasa’s old town environment, culture and architecture,” she wrote.

Woeser’s letter received thousands of comments and reposts from supporters on Weibo before it was taken down by censors on Monday.

© cindyliuwenxin for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: environmental degradation, environmental regulation, Hydropower, lhasa, mining industry, Tibet, Tibet Dialogue, Tibet environment, Woeser
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

One friend, who works for an environmental nonprofit in Beijing, advised: “I have a Sportsta mask made by Respro, a U.K. company, which has a replaceable filter, which you can replace every 2 to 3 months with regular use. However, size-wise, it’s not great for women, especially women who have smaller faces.” To function optimally, he added, “It should be a snug fit.” Ideally, I should locate a store in the U.S. that sells them, but as fallback, such high-end foreign-made gas masks are now selling briskly on Taobao.com, China’s leading e-retailer.

In addition to buying face masks, people in China who can afford them are also picking up indoor air filters. Most office workers spend 80 percent of their time indoors, but Beijing’s poorly insulated buildings can’t fully keep the smog outside. Meanwhile, in the wake of a recent scandal over China’s failure to properly regulate bottled water, I’ve also been advised to purchase equipment for filtering water at home or in hotel rooms. For all China’s success in building some kinds of modern infrastructure—airports and highways, for instance—a string of recent public-health lapses has given rise to a grim, do-it-yourself approach to pollution control and personal safety. (To be sure, there’s a limit to which anyone can truly insulate herself from the city she breathes in.)

Air pollution in Beijing reached record levels in January as the capital city battled a winter “airpocalypse” that one Chinese public health expert called worse than SARS. The levels of two key air pollutants in Beijing rose by nearly 30% in the first three months of the year, and Larson also points out that China just suffered its smoggiest March in 52 years. Several recent studies have linked pollution to birth defects and premature deaths in China, and the country’s new leaders have declared “ecological progress” a priority even though bureaucratic infighting has threatened to complicate any potential solutions.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, airpocalypse, Beijing, pollution, public health
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

At 2:15pm protesters rolled out another long banner, this time white with black letters. The police, who earlier voiced that the red banner [reading "Anning oil refinery, don’t put our home into environmental hell!"] was too provocative, sent a small troop to inspect the white banner which read “Give me back beautiful Kunming! We want to survive! We want to be healthy! PX project, get out of Kunming!” Protesters rushed to engage with the police, asking whether or not the banner passed muster. With a supportive and encouraging nod from a police captain, the crowd burst into applause and paraded the banner around the square. […]

[…] Some media outlets reported cell phone service disruption at the protest zone. I personally did not experience this. No organization or local NGO announced themselves as the protest organizer and no names of organizations have been named by media outlets. At the same time, media reports have given very little credit to the protesters for maintaining civility (not a guarantee for Chinese demonstrations) and to the police force for patiently allowing (and thus softly promoting the demonstration). After all, Kunming’s security forces have to breathe the city’s air just the same as anyone.

Protesters are awaiting public announcement from the city or provincial government on the status of the PX plant. They are calling for greater transparency in the approval process and disclosure of the project’s environmental assessment. Until these results are delivered, this issue is likely to gain momentum among Kunming’s citizens making the 5/4 protest the first of many. […]

In contrast with the Kunming demonstration, planned protests in Chengdu on the same day were met with a obstructive tactics such as a “weekend-long earthquake drill” and—as NPR’s Louisa Lim reported—a rescheduled weekend:

The tentacles of the stability-maintenance machine go deep, and all of them swung into action in Chengdu. A woman who’d forwarded a message about the protest on social media was forced to apologize on television earlier in the week. At least 10 dissidents were put under house arrest or forced to “go on holiday,” according to a local human rights website. Meanwhile, employees at state-run work units were warned that they’d be sacked if they protested.

Then there was an enormous leafleting campaign. Households received letters from the government calling for “everyone to stand firm and not believe rumors, and not participate [in protests] in order to prevent people with other motives from seizing this opportunity to create turmoil.” The letters had the unintended effect of bringing the Pengzhou plant to the attention of those who hadn’t already heard about it, creating an even greater groundswell of suppressed discontent.

[…] Since any attempt to protest would clearly have been unwise, some citizens protested in silence by wearing facemasks. Given the levels of pollution, however, this was ineffective. Others commented wryly that the police show of force represented a new “Chengdu model” of dissent, where the actual marching had been outsourced to the security forces.

An editorial in the state-owned Global Times argued that heavy industry projects are economically necessary, but that trying to brush public concerns aside is the wrong approach:

China’s economic development is inseparable from the development of heavy chemical projects. However, the reality is that residents do not want to pay for China’s overall situation at the price of their living environment.

Questions over the development of heavy chemical projects are mainly discussed by local governments and enterprises. Governments have good intentions, with the goals of developing the economy and creating employment, while the public focuses on environmental situation. It has become a stalemate.

To break through this deadlock, local governments should make ordinary people’s environmental anxieties their first concern. They should represent ordinary people’s ecological and comprehensive interests and strive for these interests. Problems will be solved in a much more orderly and rational manner if governments are trusted by public in this regard.

[…] Hanging on to outdated social governance approaches will only make things worse. There is always a way out for heavy chemical projects. Current problems come from the methods of dealing with them.

Also at Global Times, a report on the protests by Chang Meng and Duan Wuning stressed the importance of timely transparency surrounding industrial projects:

“PX is a basic petrochemical raw material and is safe if proper protocols are followed. People are scared because there is a lack of access to information or participation in the projects,” Jin Yong, a leading petrochemical expert at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times.

[…] Information disclosure for both projects was opaque and came out late under public pressure.

“We met with the project committee in April, which was the first public communication event after the construction for two years,” a staffer of Green Kunming, a local environmental NGO, told the Global Times.

“Public rights to information access, participation in environmental policies and judicial remedies are key to solving these situations and preventing the EIA from being manipulated by developers and officials,” Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, told the Global Times.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chengdu, Chengdu PX, economic development, environmental protests, Kunming, Kunming PX, Ma Jun, protests, PX, Sichuan, stability maintenance, transparency, Yunnan
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Some demonstrators wore symbolic masks and brandished posters warning against the dangers of a paraxylene (PX) spill.

“We want to survive, we want health, get PX out of Kunming”, a banner read.

Two years ago, protests against a PX factory in the city of Dalian forced the city government to close the plant, though it reportedly re-opened later.

Saturday’s protest in Kunming, in the south-west of the country, attracted at least 200 people, according to state media.

Chinese bloggers, however, put the number at up to 2,000.

A Xinhua report claimed about 100 protesters gathered, along with 1000 “onlookers” who were also wearing face masks and holding banners. But witnesses say the number of protesters was higher:

#Anti-PX protest in kunming. News says 100s of protesters & 1000+ onlookers. But i saw different, teach-in style protest. All participated.

— Brian Eyler (@aikunming) May 4, 2013

Anti-PX protest in Kunming. Photo from height of protest. 90min mark. twitter.com/aikunming/stat…

— Brian Eyler (@aikunming) May 4, 2013

Possibly the best picture of Kunming anti-PX protest I saw today pbs.twimg.com/media/BJZtUV2C…

— Yaxue Cao (@YaxueCao) May 4, 2013

Weibo photo showing anti-PX protesters in #Kunming are holding self-made banners. twitter.com/Edourdoo/statu…

— edde (@Edourdoo) May 4, 2013

Also on Saturday, calls went out online, and were quickly squashed, for protests against the construction of an oil refinery plant near Chengdu. From ABC News Australia:

Police also lined the streets of Chengdu, the capital of southwest China’s Sichuan province, after locals planned to demonstrate over a nearby chemical plant, residents said.

“There were a lot of police outside government offices, public spaces and important crossroads in the city,” one resident surnamed Liu said, adding that fliers posted around the city in recent days had called for a protest.

[...]

The government responded with notices calling on people not to demonstrate, Liu said.

[...]

Local police on Saturday morning announced that they would be carrying out an earthquake protection drill, a claim dismissed by thousands of internet users.

And from AP:

After word spread about an environmental protest that was planned for Saturday in the central Chinese city of Chengdu, drugstores and printing shops were ordered to report anyone making certain purchases. Microbloggers say government fliers urged people not to demonstrate, and schools were told to stay open to keep students on campus.

And when Saturday came, thousands of police officers and security staff were on Chengdu’s streets, some of them making a tight ring around a major public square. A weekend-long earthquake drill, officials said, but many residents didn’t believe it. They said city officials pre-emptively quashed the protest over a petrochemical plant that a powerful state-owned enterprise is building about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of Chengdu.

“What do they fear?” asked local resident Tina Zhong, contacted via China’s social media. “If the government can share more information, the public would be less distrusting.”

Weibo posts about the protests were censored and activists were detained ahead of the planned protest. Anti-PX protests have flared up in Dalian and Xiamen when plans were announced to build plants there in recent years.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chengdu PX, dalian px, environmental protests, Kunming PX, PX, Xiamen PX
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Shanghai resident’s are protesting a new lithium ion battery factory.

Factory Protest Planned for Saturday: Chengdu netizens have been calling for residents to “take a walk” on Jiuyan Bridge tomorrow to protest the start of operations at the new Pengzhou Petrochemicals factory. Weibo about Pengzhou Petrochemicals have been deleted and blocked, while the Chengdu government has publicly stated that it has arrested netizens who have “disseminated rumors of protest.” On May 4th, 2008, residents protested the construction of the same factory.

Today, Weibo user Song Shinan posted that the authorities are requiring secondary school and university students to attend class on Saturday to keep them from protesting. Song’s account has since been deleted. Coincidentally, state media have also been covering the State Council Information Office’s “focused attack on rumor-mongering Weibo VIPs.”

• May Fourth+take a walk (5月4日+散步)
• May Fourth+demonstrate (5月4日+示威)

Shanghaiers Protest Battery Factory: Residents of Shanghai’s Songjiang district are protesting the construction of a lithium ion battery plant by Shanghai Guoxuan Electronics Ltd., fearing the manufacturing process will contaminate the water.

• Guoxuan (国轩)
• battery factory (电池厂)

Netizens Sleuth Poisoning Case: In 1994, then Tsinghua University student Zhu Ling was poisoned with thallium, most likely by her politically connected roommate. The bright, ambitious young woman suffered severe neurological damage. She is now paralyzed, nearly blind, and intellectually impaired. Netizens recently “reopened” her unsolved case on Weibo. Offbeat China looks at the history of case and its significance as a test of China’s rule of law, while Fei Chang Dao has tracked online censorship of netizen inquiry and demand for justice.

• Zhu Ling (朱令)
• Sun Wei (孙维): Zhu’s former roommate at Tsinghua.
• thallium poisoning (铊中毒)
• Tsinghua+poisoning (清华+中毒)
• Tsinghua+poison (清华+投毒)
• thallium (铊)

All Chinese-language words are tested using simplified characters. The same terms in traditional characters occasionally return different results.

Browse all of CDT’s collected sensitive words in this bilingual Google spreadsheet.

CDT Chinese runs a project that crowd-sources filtered keywords on Sina Weibo search. CDT independently tests the keywords before posting them, but some searches later become accessible again. We welcome readers to contribute to this project so that we can include the most up-to-date information. To add words, check out the form at the bottom of CDT Chinese’s latest sensitive words post.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Chengdu, Chengdu PX, environmental protests, Internet censorship, Ministry of Truth, Sensitive Words Series, Shanghai, Songjiang factory protest, Tsinghua University, weibo
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall