BEIJING (USA TODAY) — Thousands of residents poured into the streets this weekend to oppose an industrial waste pipeline project in the east China city of Qidong. Some overturned police cars; others occupied and ransacked city hall.
They won their fight.
The pipeline that residents fear will pollute their water will not be built, the government promised on the Qidong police micro-blog and the website of Nantong city, which oversees Qidong.
This apparent victory for residents follows another one this month when protesters in the southwest city of Shifang, in Sichuan province, forced officials to scrap a planned copper refinery. A large demonstration halted a petrochemicals plant in Dalian, in eastern China, last year.
Environmental experts cheer the growing rights awareness among China’s citizens that forced the Qidong decision, but they caution that China will face many more such protests unless the government overhauls its opaque decision-making process and allows the public to participate.
As China keeps up its frenzied pace of industrialization and urbanization, more protests are inevitable as China continues to “deny the communities the right to be informed and participate,” said Ma Jun of the Institute for Public and Environmental Affairs.
“With rising public awareness, people will take action to defend their own rights,” Ma said. “But we can’t resolve them all through street action, we can’t afford the social cost.”
After startling scenes of protest Saturday, order was restored Sunday, said Pan Songhua, who runs a small company in Qidong. Some social media sites reported a heavy security presence.
The pipeline, intended to discharge wastewater from a Japanese-owned paper mill, also stirred local anti-Japanese feelings, Pan said.
Both the Qidong and Shifang demonstrations “reflect what happens when there are no effective formal channels for public input into environmental decision making,” said Alex Wang, a Chinese environmental law expert at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law.
