In a rare concession, Dalian’s top official on Sunday “tried to appease the crowd by promising to move the polluting project out of the city,” Xinhua said, adding that there was no sign of the protest dispersing soon.

Protesters, including children, marched holding banners that declared: “I love Dalian and reject poison” and “return me my home and garden, get out PX, protect Dalian,” according to photographs posted on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter ….

“A poster was put on the Internet yesterday calling people to ‘stroll’ on Sunday morning starting from 10 a.m. on the People’s Square, near which the Dalian government is located,” a resident in Dalian, who declined to be named, told Reuters by telephone ….

Public distrust of the government mounted after Chinese media reported that the petrochemical plant might have been allowed to operate illegally months before it received mandatory environmental approval. According to Southern Metropolis News, the Fujia plant started full-scale production in June 2009, but it did not get the go-ahead from the Liaoning environmental protection bureau until April last year.

Sunday evening authorities announced the PX plant will be closed immediately, Reuters reports:

Authorities in northeastern China on Sunday ordered a petrochemical plant to be shut down immediately after thousands of people demonstrated, demanding the relocation of the factory at the center of a toxic spill scare, state media said.

Demonstrators in the port city of Dalian, in Liaoning province, faced down a wall of police in riot gear in front of the municipal government office. Minor scuffles broke out, although there was no report of injuries among the 12,000 protesters, state news agency Xinhua said.

The authorities also pledged to relocate the Fujia Chemical Plant, Xinhua said, citing a statement from the municipal committee of the Communist Party and the government. The report did not say where the plant is likely to move to.

Global Voices Online has collected a number of photos of the protest from Weibo; see also two aerial shots of the crowds [edit: and Wen Yunchao's extensive gallery on Google+]. Reuters reported that Weibo searches for “Dalian” “PX” and other related terms were blocked, while reports on Twitter suggested that cell phone signals in the area were also being blocked [edit: voice calls could be made, but data networks were reportedly inaccessible]. Any Western criticism of these measures is likely to be met with references to David Cameron’s proposal to control riots by restricting social media access, and to the shutting-down of cellular phone signals on San Francisco’s BART transit system to disrupt protests, both on Thursday.

Also on Thursday, the South China Morning Post explored prospects for the plant’s relocation, which was already under consideration:

The PX plant would make history if it became the first large, operational petrochemical project to be relocated on the mainland.

But given the scale of the PX plant and growing environmental awareness, analysts said it could take a long time to find another site.

“It will be a real test for the Dalian authorities in the face of tough choices between economic growth and the public’s well-being,” Beijing-based environmentalist Ma Jun said.

However, he added that the relocation was unlikely to eliminate huge environmental risks posed by dozens of other large petrochemical plants in the same industrial zone in the city’s eastern suburbs.

Analysts noted that the Dalian government could face tough questions about who should pay for the relocation and who should be held responsible for building the PX project in the first place.

The sensitivity of the threatened leak was no doubt heightened by the large oil spill in Dalian which followed a pipeline explosion last summer. The disaster led to a lengthy clean-up operation in which one local firefighter drowned in oil.

In a landmark case in 2007, protests forced the relocation of a planned PX plant in Xiamen.

More photos and video on CDT Chinese here, and here.

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Post tags: chemical plant, chemical spill, dalian, Liaoning, oil spill, pollution, protests, sina weibo, xiamen, Xiamen PX
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The salt panic, plus a surge in online voices opposing plans to build dozens of power plants across the country, suggest that the government may have a harder time than it expected managing its aggressive nuclear energy plans. Currently, these foresee an approximate eightfold expansion within just nine years.

Chinese and overseas experts worry that safety cannot be guaranteed at that rate of growth, saying the country lacked experienced nuclear engineers, plant operators and a nuclear safety culture ….

“The salt-buying panic shows that in the future, the lack of trust in this area between people and the government is going to be really serious,” said Kevin Jianjun Tu, a senior associate for energy and climate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington….

There are precedents of popular resistance influencing the outcome of government-backed projects. In 2007, residents of the prosperous coastal city of Xiamen organized demonstrations via text message against a planned chemical plant, forcing its relocation. Yet such movements remain rare ….

The Xiamen demonstrations were cited by Human Rights in China (PDF) as an example of the country’s “growing civil consciousness”:

On June 1, 2007, more than 20,000 people demon- strated in the streets of Xiamen without a permit from the Public Security Bureau to protest plans to build a paraxylene (PX)1 chemical factory in their city. At nightfall, dozens of Xiamen residents continued to stage a peaceful sit-in in front of City Hall. The possible consequences of “breaking the law” no longer deterred the citizens of Xiamen from undertaking the largest demonstration in a major Chinese city since June 1989.

Before the demonstration, more than one million Xia- men citizens sent out cell-phone text messages oppos- ing the PX chemical factory project. All contained the same warning: “Taiwanese businessman Chen Yuhao’s Xianglu Group has invested in a joint venture project to build a chemical factory to manufacture paraxylene (PX) in Haicang District. Making this deadly poison [here] would be like dropping an atomic bomb on Xia- men Island. It would mean that in the future, the people of Xiamen would live with leukemia and deformed children.”

Doubts about nuclear power are shared by many in Taiwan, whose chances of effecting change may be somewhat brighter. From Global Voices Online:

Lin Tsung-yao (???), member of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant Safety Monitoring Committee, has called upon the Taiwan Power company to do a thorough reevaluation of construction of its fourth nuclear power plant:

The fourth nuclear power plant is an assembled plant… The Taiwan Power Company designed the plant itself and contracted out. When it purchased the parts in Taiwan, it usually chose the cheapest ones…Because these parts were purchased at different times and have different levels of quality, the proceedings of construction was a mess…Now test runs have begun, but we see problems like the cancelation of contracts with the original consulting company and General Electric. Therefore, we no longer have experienced consultants and supervision for this plant ….

Despite these safety concerns, Taiwan’s president Ma Ying-jeou has said that the government has dismissed calls by opposition lawmakers to halt the project, scheduled to go into operation in 2012.

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Post tags: Japan earthquake 2011, nuclear power, Taiwan, Xiamen PX
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The following tweets are from Beifeng, translated by CDT:

At the Annual Blogger Conference, I was interviewed by a reporter of the Wall Street Journal about my expectations for President Obama’s visit. I said: There have been some very extreme individual cases of human rights violations in China, I hope President Obama will show his necessary concern. Also, please say this to Chairman Hu: Please tear down the Great Firewall, it interferes with our freedom of speech.

???????????WSJ???????????????? ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

The following photos are from CN Reviews, Shizhao’s blog and Jean Yim’s Flickr:

Hong Kong-based Ming Pao reports on the Chinese bloggers conference.

Click here to see more photos of the Lianzhou Chinese Bloggers Conference, by Shizhao.

Even China’s official English newspaper Global Times reported the Lianzhou Chinese Bloggers Conference. Please read: Bloggers join heads in Guangdong by Zhang Lei.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: chinese blogger conference, CNbloggerCon, tweets, Twitter, Wen Yunchao, Xiamen PX
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China’s environment ministry has approved a petrochemical plant that drew fierce opposition over feared pollution in one eastern city, approving its construction several miles to the west.

Plans to build the paraxylene plant in Xiamen, Fujian province, faltered in 2007 after residents there mobilized a rare mass campaign over fears of toxins from the petrochemicals, used to make polyester and fabrics.

But now the Ministry of Environmental Protection had passed an environmental impact study to build the petrochemical complex in Zhangzhou, about 50 km (30 miles) west of Xiamen, the official China News Service reported on Tuesday.

The approval means the project, costing about 14 billion yuan ($2 billion), “may move to Zhangzhou,” the report said.

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: xiamen, Xiamen PX, Zhangzhou
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So great is the Great Hall of the People that there’s always room for a sideshow, even when the national legislature is in session.

Last Friday at 8:50 a.m., a pack of frumpy middle-aged women clambered up the steps toting plastic bags. Any place else they might be pegged for petitioners. Turned out they were support staff for the Chinese modeling agency New Silk Road (???), there for a rehearsal of an annual “Women’s Day” ceremony. “We’re in the show,” boasted one of the older crowd, evidently referring to their younger charges. Soon the jingle-jangle of a made-for-CCTV gala beckoned from the theater above, rebounding through the desolate foyer below. Access was restricted, however; lads in black suits were posted at every elevator and staircase, blocking passage to the second floor. Wu Yi, the models and 1,000 other women from around the world were well-guarded.

Down on the main level the Fujian province delegation was open to the press, and somewhat revealing in its own right. Those reporters who weren’t chasing the upcoming Taiwan presidential elections were checking in on the unbuilt Taiwanese-owned petrochemical project popularly dubbed ‘Xiamen PX’. The name’s fast becoming a misnomer, of course. Since at least December, when citizens balked over an environmental impact assessment of the project’s original ‘hood, Xiamen and Fujian leaders have pushed to jettison the plant from Xiamen down the shore to Gulei peninsula, in the city of Zhangzhou, a strip of fishing villages far less populous and developed. But company bosses along with central government planners administering the project have yet to commit to such a move, which would require a new round of approvals and feasibility studies, construction of new port, power and water facilities, and likely a financial package of fresh concessions and compensation. Any potential move was further complicated by protests the previous weekend one county over from the proposed site, which spiraled into bloody clashes with police.

News of the move Fujian leaders floated in December was first leaked in the Ta Kung Pao, immediately refuted in the Wen Wei Po, only to be picked up in Southern Weekend. It then permeated indirectly in progressive media paeans to Xiameners’ coup. But this was the first time key Fujian figures involved faced the press over it since that time.

Reuters coverage captures the gist of their comments. Interestingly, Xinhua and other Chinese outlets put a rather populist and placatory spin on their comments, in contrast to the shifty, patronizing tone one might have gleaned from the whole exchange, excerpts of which are roughly translated below.

Fujian officials have been caught in a bind: between, on the one hand, continued external pressures to allay public fears and, on the other, sources contend, internal criticism for bungling the blowback there and helping spur a rash of protests over other projects elsewhere. As such they hedged conservatively. They sounded shifty and abrasive. They made it seem only natural and self-evident that while the project was sound, its present location in Xiamen no longer was. They soft-pedaled on the media and popular dissent that forced them to adopt that posture and skipped entirely over the misguided planning in the area that played into the controversy to start. And most ominously, they defended the Gulei site in practically the same passive-aggressive manner they once had Xiamen.

It was right here in Beijing one year ago that the whole to-do over the petrochemical project first caught the glare of Chinese press, when the Taiwan-born Xiamen U. biochemist and CCPPC delegate Zhao Yufen filed an incendiary proposal to uproot the project. Zhao did not land a new term this year.

The PX affair did come up in conversation among the Fujian NPCers last week, according to one Fuzhou-based journalist tagging along with the delegation. But it was not an agenda item, he explained, since there was nothing conclusive to discuss. “It’s leaving Xiamen is for sure, but whether it’s going to Zhangzhou [city] has not been resolved.”

Journalists at the session had the tea to thank for the first trickle of official comment. Among those to succomb to urinary pressures was the mayor of Zhangzhou, Li Jianguo (pictured below). After he relieved himself he was cornered with ease, and quizzed about the protests in his jurisdiction:

“Because right now this PX project is rather sensitive, so we have not said it’s going to land in Zhangzhou. There’s only this intention, an intention is all.

“Now, about this project… It’s a good project. The project itself does not have any problems. That’s the first point. The second point is that for it to come to Zhangzhou, Zhangzhou should be able to accommodate it, because the conditions and environment are all okay, so that if you’re talking about a petrochemical project on Gulei peninsula, it should be acceptable. If it’s not PX, then other petrochemical projects could be accommodated as well.”

Li Jianguo

This correspondent asked him how the protests across the water on Dongshan Island would affect the recommended move.

“The main problem is, because the masses basically do not get what PX is, and are unclear about it, and we’ve had relatively little contact with this sort of thing, so correct guidance is needed on these moves. Because if you look overseas, there are a lot of PX [plants]. Like in Singapore, there is only a little over 600 metres between the plant equipment and [city areas].”

Li was soon rescued from the scrum by a publicity flak.

Later, during the official Q&A, this correspondent asked Fujian Party Secretary Lu Zhangong for an update on the state of the project. He let Xiamen mayor Liu Cigui (pictured below) have the first crack.

Lu Zhangong

Liu Cigui

Liu turned straight to this correspondent. “Have you been to Xiamen?” he asked sharply. (I told him I had.) Liu had been among the more conciliatory official voices as opposition toward the project swelled in May, which is not necessarily saying much. Clearly he had settled back into bureaucrat mode. Liu gave a long-winded sketch of Xiamen’s transformation the past three decades on the back of double-digit growth patterns.

“So Xiamen’s positioning [today] is as a modernized, scenic, tourist port city. This PX project that you just mentioned is a petrochemical project. It should be said that this is a good project – that is for sure. [But] because the period from the time efforts to win the project were initiated to the time construction began was relatively long, we’ve been required to give added consideration to speed and quality as Xiamen developed, and to Xiamen’s function and positioning.”

Space was constricted in Xiamen, noted Liu, because half the land is mountainous and another part national preserve. Tourism and ports were bustling as well. Hence Xiamen was become more of a financial, R&D, logistics and convention center, and the district of Haicang, originally zoned for petrochemicals, had to cater to the development of high-end service industry. He made but passing mention of the environmental re-assessment from an official academy in Beijing.

“Because of this, we’ve recommended this project — because after all it is just a project, right? So the media have hyped this a good deal. Because Xiamen is a sensitive area, so perhaps for a beautiful city like Xiamen the degree of attention everybody pays is relatively high. Naturally it should not have gotten to this extent. Because I’ve come across a lot of media and they all want to ask me about it. So I feel that the degree of attention on Xiamen, as a beautiful city, is relatively high. And we do thank the the media, too — so at the moment…the city government holds that this project, this good project, can go some place in Fujian province that is more suitable, more spacious. Because [in the original location] it has only a scale of 800,000 tonnes [in yearly output] and cannot possibly develop further. So there’s no room for even the project itself to extend and broaden its line. Therefore, in order to build the petrochemical industry stronger and bigger, because the petrochemical industry is still very much in need on the western coast [of the South China Sea] and across our country, we recommend this project not be built in Haicang but somewhere else in the province with more space. So right now we’re negotiating with the owners, and in accordance with procedures, reporting to higher authorities. I think we’re heading in a satisfactory direction to develop. Thank you.”

The aloof account from Liu seemed to amuse Lu, who sniggered. “Heh, heh…This matter was very simple to start with. But then they messed back and forth with it and made it very complicated.”

Who Lu meant by “they” was unclear.

Liu sniggered back. “It was just a project, naturally.”

Now it was Lu’s turn. He was careful to bring up to date what had gone wrong without delving into specifics or assigning blame. He maintained there had been geographical “confusion” (in the media, presumably) between the main island of Xiamen and the greater city area where the plant was to be located. After Xiamen became a Special Economic Zone in the early 1980’s, he noted, Haicang peninsula was formally zoned for Taiwanese investment and petrochemical development (officially in 1990-91, when the intended beneficiary was Formosa Plastics).

“But for various reasons, it never became a significant petrochemical zone.”

Over the years, Lu went on, Xiamen’s “situation changed”. It emerged a shipping and high-tech center, and the application process for the PX project dragged on during this time, Lu said. He did not point out that during this five year lag from 2001 to 2006, the local government rezoned Haicang a second city center to accommodate a commercial real estate boom and approved two dozen property projects within two miles of the proposed plant site. He only reiterated the fact that at this point there was little space to spare.

“For example, this project could be placed there. But to turn this project into a petrochemical district, a petrochemical base, would be difficult. There’s no leftover land to develop further. So Xiamen people were correct to have complaints. At the time, then, the Xiamen people had complaints. That had to do with Xiamen’s function and positioning.”

Lu ran down the tick-tock of how the local government had suspended the project and ordered an independent environmental survey, but did not specifically mention popular protests. He reiterated that there was nothing wrong with the project itself and again cited the example of Singapore. But he came back to the changes in Xiamen.

“So as it happened, based on the relevant objections of the people, and with this shift, whereby Xiamen settled upon adjusting its function, it raised this recommendation [to relocate the PX factory on Gulei peninsula] – right now it can only be said that it’s a recommendation, and nothing else has been carried out – Fujian province wishes to agree with Xiamen’s opinion, because this place Xiamen is too small.”

His point was that the most recent protests flared prematurely.

“Before the move is set, first the national government must agree to you relocating. Two, the company’s choice must be respected. If it chooses Fujian, fine, but it could choose not to be in Fujian. It might want to go somewhere else…Right now we have no idea about any these things, but there are some people [fighting the move] with all they’ve got. So now there basically aren’t any clear problems, but because of various factors, some of the masses are still reacting with accusations. The place where they’re reacting in Zhangzhou, Dongshan — hah, hah — this has even less to do with Dongshan.”

For an instant he was choked up in awkwardly jittery laughter.

“…Now it’s already being dealt with appropriately.”

Lu called on the Zhangzhou mayor, Li Jianguo. Li asserted Zhangzhou’s capability to build a port to support the petrochemical trade on Gulei peninsula:

“My meaning is, if there were a good project like this that could be situated on Gulei peninsula, we would very much welcome it, and could undertake it. Right now, we have this intention, but because this intention has not entered into something substantive, it’s only an intention. But if this intention is for real, we also would very much welcome it.”

Added Li:

“But most recently, there are certain individuals, whether over the Internet or through other means, individual people who are not very welcoming. What’s the main problem here? There’s a kind of misunderstanding. Where’s the misunderstanding? The misunderstanding is that if [the project] moves to Zhangzhou it will have such and such an impact — there’s this misunderstanding here. In addition, there’s a misunderstanding of this project. Is this project alright or not? In truth this project is very good.”

Again he returned to the example of a major petrochemical base in Singapore. “At its nearest it’s only 650 meters away from the metropolitan area. Everywhere in the world has [such sites]….”

Lu cut in. “And America.”

Li: “Right.”

Lu: “That petrochemical base in America, its scale is much bigger still.”

Li: “That petrochemical base in America, what’s that place called? How big is the scale of the refinery? 100 million tonnes [a year], and it’s also very close to the metropolitan area.”

Lu chimed back: “This is just a misunderstanding. Right now the people, their environmental awareness is getting stronger and stronger. This should be fully endorsed. This is a goal of ours, too.”

Li turned to a reporter from Hong Kong’s Singtao Daily. “Just now one of our journalists here, when I stepped out, he asked me something. I want to correct you once more. This journalist here asked me question, saying, ‘Xiamen did not want this PX project.’ I want to correct that. You can’t say Xiamen did not want it. As I just was saying, and Mayor Liu was saying too: This is a good project. Everybody was fighting to win it.”

The chamber fell silent for a few seconds before Lu prompted the next question.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Fujian, Gulei Peninsula, NPC 2008, Xiamen PX
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Anti-PX marches on Dongshan Island two weeks ago were a country cousin to the urbane “strolls” last year in downtown Xiamen. The protest burst into a rumble, as often occurs down in the sticks, only to be smothered just as fast by riot police and a media blackout. Still the resemblance to Xiamen was strong.

The demonstrations in Dongshan sprouted from national press reports – of a shadowy Fujian government proposal to relocate the forsaken Xiamen petrochemical project nearby – and grew from the volley of spitballs in local neighborhoods and chatrooms. Opposition took about as long to gestate into action (two-and-a-half months), drew a comparable number of citizens (as many as ten thousand, as few as two), and relied on ample logistical support from the local business community. And as in Xiamen, where one young protester was bagged for taking it to the streets before everyone else did, there were false starts as well.
(...)
Read the rest of Two Letters That Plant Protests (891 words)

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Post tags: environmental protests, Gulei Peninsula, industrial pollution, Xiamen PX
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Violent protests erupted in several southern Chinese fishing towns after residents heard a chemical factory rejected as environmentally dangerous by the nearby city of Xiamen would be built in their area instead, witnesses and other residents said Monday.

The protesters, who began their uprising peacefully on Thursday, clashed repeatedly with baton-wielding police Friday and Saturday in several towns on the Gulei Peninsula, about 50 miles south of Xiamen on the Taiwan Strait, the witnesses and residents said. A dozen people were injured and carried away for treatment in local hospitals, and about 15 were arrested, according to demonstrators and their family members.

Many articles in Chinese cyberspace about the Dongshan protests have been deleted by the government censors, such as here, here and here. However, overseas Chinese websites already republished some of the contents, including photos and video clips.

Photo source: United Daily News

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Post tags: Gulei Peninsula, protests, Xiamen PX
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A group of Shanghai residents who had applied to the government for the right to hold an anti-maglev protest were rejected by the government. Despite this, small numbers of them intended to go on another “walk” in order to publicly air their grievances. This time, they were stopped by some other residents…

On the other hand, while we were out yesterday afternoon we did notice some “protest banners” up at 612 Nanjing Xi Lu, near all those ritzy shopping centers. The residents of the small lane complain that the unabated construction that has left them hemmed in by towering office and commercial buildings has adversely affected the physical structure of their homes.

Perhaps most interesting, both the maglev and Nanjing Lu protests have grown out of what Peijin calls a larger homeowners movement, which itself appears to take inspiration from the highly-publicized Xiamen PX protests of last year.

© Wu Nan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: land rights, protests, Shanghai, Xiamen PX
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Though the people’s coup over paraxylene (PX) in Xiamen is not official yet, echoes it are being heard in protests from Nanjing to Shanghai to Beijing. The trend, in turn, is said to have made the Xiamen case much trickier for the central government to close. “They don’t want to provide an example that would set off a chain reaction,” notes one official source in Xiamen, adding: “But it seems a chain reaction’s already underway.”(...)
Read the rest of PX Workers Protest, No One Notices (Updated) (1,687 words)

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Post tags: environmental protests, Xiamen PX, Xianglu
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The Xiamen protest was different to the thousands of others that take place across China because of who was involved.

The customary groups of poor, uneducated farmers were joined by young, motivated environmentalists, such as Wu Xian.

When he heard about the PX project, he set up an online discussion group and urged Xiamen’s residents to protest against the plant.

A few days before the first demonstration, police arrested the 20-year-old, who is a manager at a local karaoke bar. [Full text]

[Image: Activist Wu Xian, via the BBC]

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Post tags: environmental protests, Xiamen PX
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