Protesters In China Force Cancellation of Industrial Waste Pipeline

Protesters In China Force Cancellation of Industrial Waste Pipeline

by | Jul 28, 2012 | Defensive Violence, NEWS, Obstruction & Occupation, Property & Material Destruction, Toxification

By Shiv Malik for The Guardian

Officials in eastern China have cancelled a planned industrial waste pipeline project after up to 1,000 environmental demonstrators occupied a government office, overturned cars, destroyed computers and beat police officers.

The demonstration in the city of Qidong was the latest in a string of protests sparked by fears of environmental degradation.

Zhang Guohua, mayor of the eastern city of Nantong, announced the cancellation of the pipeline, which would have emptied waste water from a Japanese-owned paper factory via the coastal town of Qidong into the sea. It is the second industrial project to be cancelled in a month.

The decision came hours after about 1,000 protesters marched through the city of Qidong, about one hour north of Shanghai, shouting slogans against the pipeline.

Several protesters entered the city government’s main building and were seen smashing computers, overturning desks and throwing documents out of the windows to loud cheers from the crowd. Five cars and one minibus were also upended, according to Reuters reporters at the scene.

At least two police officers were dragged into the crowd at the government office and punched and beaten bloody.

Environmental worries have stoked calls for expanded rights for citizens and greater consultation in the tightly controlled one-party state and come before a once-in-a-decade leadership transition this year.

The protest followed similar demonstrations against projects in the Sichuan town of Shifang earlier this month and in the cities of Dalian in the north-east and Haimen in southern Guangdong province in the past year.

The government in Shifang halted a multimillion-pound copper alloy plant project because it said there was insufficient public understanding and support after teargas was used to disperse protesters.

The Chinese government has vowed to clean up China’s skies and waterways and increasingly tried to appear responsive to complaints about pollution.

But environmental disputes pit citizens against local officials, whose aim is to lure fresh investment and revenue into their areas.

From The Guardian

Photo by Yiran Ding on Unsplash

Protestors in China force government to halt construction of chemical factory

by | Jul 4, 2012 | Property & Material Destruction, Repression at Home, Toxification

By Tania Branigan / The Guardian

Thousands of anti-pollution protesters took to the streets of a south-west Chinese city on Monday, halting the construction of a multimillion pound molybdenum copper plant.

Police used tear gas to disperse the crowds after rioters lobbed bricks at government offices in Shifang, Sichuan province, the English edition of the state-run newspaper Global Times reported. Other accounts said a dozen police vehicles were overturned or attacked.

Authorities said they had temporarily suspended the project while they conducted inquiries, but warned they would investigate anyone who spread rumours.

The demonstration is the latest in a series of “not in my backyard” grassroots protests in China, testifying to growing fears about the toll that development is taking of the environment and health. Last summer, tens of thousands of people in the north-eastern city of Dalian marched to demand the relocation of a chemical plant.

The demonstrations in Shifang began on Sunday night, when students and residents gathered to protest. A local police officer told the Global Times there were “several thousand” protesters on Monday, while the South China Morning Post reported that tens of thousands were involved.

Photos posted online showed protesters carrying banners reading: “Safeguard our hometown, oppose the chemical factory’s construction” and “Unite to protect the environment for the next generation”.

Residents told the Global Times that some had filed complaints against the project, but officials had taken no action.

“The local government will definitely carry out supervision during the entire process of constructing the project. If the company fails in the environmental protection assessment, the local government would not allow it to go into production,” Xu Guangyong, mayor of Shifang, told protesters on Monday morning, the state-run China News Service reported.

But by Monday night, authorities had vowed to suspend construction of the 10.4bn yuan (£1bn) molybdenum-copper alloy factory by Shanghai-listed Sichuan Hongda.

Shifang government said on its microblog account that police officers had been injured along with 13 protesters.

Others said the number of injured protesters was far higher, the South China Morning Post reported.

“Many protesters were injured when police sprayed tear gas at the crowds, from teenage students to elderly residents,” one witness told the newspaper.

The newspaper said a petition letter circulated by protesters warned: “It will be too late to protest once the factory is built … How many Shifang people have enough money to move away from the city? We’ll have to unite to keep the chemical factory out of Shifang.”

Ma Jun, the director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said the case showed the lack of public participation in environmental decision-making.

“Heavy metal projects are always highly polluting. Of course the public has concerns about this,” he said.

“The government only released the short version of the plant’s environmental report, which did not have information about the solid waste and waste water. It should have released the full version.

“At the least, they needed to hold a public hearing. In other countries the public have legal recourse when their right to participation cannot be guaranteed, but that is not possible in China.”

Sichuan Hongda could not be reached for comment.

From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/03/china-anti-pollution-protest-copper

32 Yangtze finless porpoises wash up dead, leaving the population close to extinction

by | May 1, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction

By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay

Six years after the Yangtze river dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer), or baiji, was declared “functionally extinct” by scientists, another marine mammal appears on the edge of extinction in China’s hugely degraded Yangtze River. In less than two months, 32 Yangtze finless porpoises (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaeorientalis), a subspecies of the finless porpoise, have been found dead in Dongting and Poyang Lakes in the Yangtze, reports the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

The porpoises are suffering from many of the same impacts that pushed the baiji to extinction: illegal electrofishing, strikes by boat propellors, poisons, and possibly pollution and food shortages from lower water levels linked by officials to climate change. Autopsies show that at least two of the animals were killed by electrofishing and boat propellers.

“This tragedy shows that Yangtze finless porpoise is facing enormous challenges,” Lei Gang, head of WWF China’s Central Yangtze program, said in a press release. “The porpoise deaths illustrates that without effective measures to fundamentally reverse the trend of ecological deterioration, future of the incredible creature is far from certain. We have to act immediately.”

Researchers believe that around 1,000 Yangtze finless porpoises survive in the river with the population in dramatic decline. Currently, the IUCN Red List is evaluating the subspecies to see if the situation warrants classifying the population as Critically Endangered.

Breakneck development, including a series of dams, with little environmental regard has left the ecology of the Yangtze River in shambles. Aside from the baiji’s extinction, many of the river’s key species are vanishing. The Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius), arguably the world’s biggest freshwater fish, is listed as Critically Endangered with only two fish confirmed since 2002. Scientists fear the fish may be soon gone for good, if not already, after a 2009 survey couldn’t find a single fish. In addition the Chinese alligator (Alligator sinensis), the Yangtze sturgeon (Acipenser dabryanus), and the Yangtze soft-shell turtle (Rafetus swinhoei) are all listed as Critically Endangered.

Still, a controversial new hydroelectric project, the Xiaonanhai Dam, is moving ahead despite concerns that it will finish off a number of the river’s endangered fish, many found no-where else in the world.

UK claims greenhouse gas reduction, while outsourcing carbon emissions to China

by | Apr 18, 2012 | Climate Change

By Fiona Harvey / The Guardian

Britons’ consumption of goods such as TVs and mobile phones made in China has “outsourced” the UK’s greenhouse-gas emissions, and is leading to a net increase in global emissions, according to a report from an influential committee of MPs.

While the UK’s own greenhouse-gas emissions have been tumbling, people and businesses have been buying an increasing proportion of manufactured products from overseas, where regulations on carbon emissions are often much weaker than within the EU. As a result, the increase in carbon emissions from goods produced overseas that are then used in Britain are now outstripping the gains made in cutting emissions here.

Tim Yeo, chairman of the energy and climate change committee, said: “Successive governments have claimed to be cutting climate-changing emissions, but in fact a lot of pollution has simply been outsourced overseas. We get through more consumer goods than ever before in the UK, and this is pushing up emissions in manufacturing countries like China.”

However, while China has become the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse-gas emissions, it has also become the world’s second biggest economy on the back of the enormous exports from its vast manufacturing sector. This means that, in effect, consumers from developed countries have paid China to take on responsibility for more greenhouse-gas emissions.

The Chinese government is reluctant to deal with the problem, insisting that China is taking on voluntary emissions-reduction targets, but is resistant to moves that would force Chinese manufacturers to obey stricter emissions limits.

This can put developed-world manufacturers at a disadvantage, which encourages the production of goods in areas with lax carbon controls, and thus pushes up emissions globally. Simon Harrison, chair of energy policy at the Institution of Engineering and Technology, said: “It’s about how you price imported goods – do you take account of the emissions involved in their production?”

When goods are manufactured in the UK and other European countries, the companies that make them are subject to strict emissions controls. For instance, they have to pay for the carbon they produce, and pay a surcharge on energy to subsidise renewable forms of generation. But overseas exporters in countries such as China and India are not subject to such stringent regulation, and often their manufacturing processes and energy generation are more carbon-intensive than the same processes here.

The government is in a quandary over what to do about the situation. Though importing carbon-intensive goods from overseas helps the UK to cut its overall emissions, it does not help to cut emissions globally, but just shifts the problem elsewhere. However, to slap import tariffs on goods from overseas that are produced in a carbon-intensive manner – which some UK manufacturers have said they would welcome – would be difficult under the World Trade Organisation’s rules.

Some green campaigners are urging the government to take responsibility for the emissions produced in the manufacture of imported goods. Andrew Pendleton, head of campaigns at Friends of the Earth, said: “One of the main reasons why nations such as China have soaring carbon emissions is because they are making goods to sell to rich western countries. This report highlights the UK’s role in creating this pollution. The government can’t continue to turn a blind eye to the damaging impact that our hunger for overseas products has on our climate. We need to tackle the problem, not shift it abroad.”

Read more from The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/18/britain-outsourcing-carbon-emissions-china

Villagers in China clash with police over land theft measures by government

by | Apr 3, 2012 | Obstruction & Occupation, Repression at Home

By Tania Branigan / The Guardian

Rural residents protesting against land grabs have clashed with police in north and south-west China, according to accounts posted online, in the latest cases to be sparked by one of the country’s most potent sources of unrest.

Villagers in south-western Yunnan province were arrested and injured when police broke up a a three-day blockade of a highway over the death of a rubber farmer who complained her land had been illegally seized, according to an account posted by an unknown user.

An officer at the Xishuangbanna police station confirmed that officers had dispersed farmers whose protest had blocked the road for several days last week, but said he did not know if there had been arrests and denied that anyone had been beaten.

The local government could not be reached on Tuesday, a public holiday in China.

Land grabs are the primary source of rural unrest in China. Earlier this year the international land rights organisation Landesa, which surveys Chinese farmers annually, warned: “The pace of land takings continues to accelerate, often leaving farmers poorly compensated and embittered.”

According to the online account, rubber farmer Li Xuelan committed suicide on 24 March over the land grab.

The following day her relatives and colleagues held a memorial in the road, resulting in tailbacks up to 3.7 miles (6km) long. The account said numbers swelled into the thousands. But two days later, around 300 riot and special police forcibly dispersed them, injuring and arresting several people, it said.

Photographs posted with the account showed large numbers of police and villagers, with one showing an officer carrying a woman away.

Separately, an overseas rights group said police had detained 22 ethnic Mongolians after hundreds of them protested against the seizure of land in the northern region of Inner Mongolia.

Although the area has generally been seen as peaceful, last year saw the biggest wave of unrest for two decades after the death of a herder who had tried to stop a convoy of coal trucks.

There has been growing tension over damage to grazing land. More than 80 police used “brutal force” on Monday to break up a demonstration of Mongolians from Tulee village near Tongliao city, the New York-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Centre said.

In a statement emailed to Reuters it said five protesters were seriously injured after trying to block a bulldozer from a state-backed forestry company from working on their farmland.

“Police violently beat up the protesters with batons. Some were bleeding, some were beaten down on the ground. Women were pulled by their hair and thrown into police vehicles,” the group said, citing a protester.

They were reportedly seeking the return of about 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres) of land which they said the forestry company had stopped managing.

Police in the region said they were unaware of any protest, and a man who answered the phone at the Tongliao public security bureau said offices were closed.

From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/03/chinese-police-land-grab-protests