{"id":47756,"date":"2015-06-23T22:57:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-23T22:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=47756 "},"modified":"2015-06-23T22:57:00","modified_gmt":"2015-06-23T22:57:00","slug":"47756-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=47756","title":{"rendered":"Shanghai Denies PX Plans as Thousands Protest Over Pollution Fears"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><\/div><div>2015-06-23<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mzzg.org\/UploadCenter\/ArticlePics\/2015\/25\/2015623image(48).jpg\" alt=\"2015623image(48).jpg (600&#215;430)\" \/><\/div><div>Demonstrators hold banners with slogans to protest against a paraxylene (PX) project in the Jinshan district of Shanghai, June 23, 2015.<\/div><div>AFP<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Authorities in Shanghai on Tuesday denied reports that they plan to relocate a paraxylene (PX) project to a chemical industrial park in the city&#8217;s Jinshan district following several days of protest by local residents.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Hundreds of Jinshan residents marched on Tuesday to the district government offices, following a much larger protest involving thousands of people over the weekend.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;The Gaoqiao petrochemical plant will close, not relocate,&#8221; a post on the Jinshan district government&#8217;s official account on the Twitter-like service Sina Weibo said.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;There is no provision for a PX plant in the environmental assessment for the [Jinshan] chemical industrial park,&#8221; it said.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;Neither will there be a PX project in the future.&#8221;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>The environmental assessment from the Shanghai Academy of Environmental Science which &#8220;showed that no PX program was included in its development plan before 2025,&#8221; according to the Shanghai-based Eastday.com news site.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>But the statement came after a Jinshan government official apparently admitted the project had been in the works.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;This project is only at the planning stages. It hasn&#8217;t been implemented,&#8221; an official who answered the phone at the Jinshan district government offices told RFA on Monday.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;There will be an announcement and an environmental impact assessment as well,&#8221; the official said.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Video of the earlier protests posted on YouTube showed thousands of people marching with banners that read &#8220;PX Out,&#8221; and chanting &#8220;Give us back our Jinshan.&#8221;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Rows of police guarded the district government buildings and controlled the crowd, online photos showed.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Chock-full of factories<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Jinshan resident Wang Zaiming said the district is already chock-full of factories, and fears for the impact on the environment are growing among local people.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;This Gaoqiao chemical factory is currently located in the Pudong development zone, and they want to move it across to Jinshan, which is a chemical industrial zone,&#8221; Wang said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;All of the chemical plants in Shanghai are being relocated over here,&#8221; he said. &#8220;People didn&#8217;t realize this before, but now they do, and that&#8217;s why they&#8217;ve come out in protest.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>A protester at the scene surnamed Yang said there was a much stronger police presence on Tuesday.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;They have sent a lot of police here today,&#8221; Yang said. &#8220;About 15 busloads of police arrived in Jinshan, as well as officials from all the local townships.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;The protesters are still here, and are all across the road outside the district government buildings,&#8221; she said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;There are several thousand people here &#8230; some people said there were 10,000 here yesterday,&#8221; Yang said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>She said local people are now worried that the police will use force to disperse the crowd.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;Of course, they&#8217;ll suppress it; they are here to frighten people,&#8221; Yang said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;Yesterday I saw people getting beaten up by riot police &#8230; I know they detained people [Monday] evening.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>A Jinshan resident surnamed Zhu said local residents are very worried about the effects of a PX plant on their health.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;Pretty much everyone from all the townships in Shanghai turned out,&#8221; Zhu said. &#8220;This was spontaneous; everyone seemed to know about it.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;Of course, it would affect our health,&#8221; he said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>He said the government had also broadcast its denial of the planned project via SMS message to local people.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;I received it,&#8221; Zhu said. &#8220;It said that there was no such project.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>But he said local people doubted the government&#8217;s word.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;There&#8217;s no smoke without a fire,&#8221; he said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rfa.org\/english\/news\/china\/shanghai-denies-px-plans-as-thousands-protest-over-pollution-fears-06232015112408.html\">For detail please visit here<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&lt;div&gt;Hundreds of Jinshan residents marched on Tuesday to the district government offices, following a much larger protest involving thousands of people over the weekend. &quot;The Gaoqiao petrochemical plant will close, not relocate,&quot; a post on the Jinshan district government&#39;s official account on the Twitter-like service Sina Weibo said.&lt;\/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;\/div&gt;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}