China Environmental Law

The Xiamen PX plant episode will, in my opinion, come to symbolize a turning point not only in China’s environmental history, but in its political history as well.  The story itself has everything: shady Taiwanese businessmen, public protests, middle class angst over property values, beleaguered local officials caught between a rock and a hard place, public hearings, toxic chemicals, Hu Jintao, concerned scientists, thousands of SMS messages, local bloggers, and the irrepressible Pan Yue.

I won’t rehash the facts (there are plenty of good contemporaneous posts here, here, and here which followed the events as they unfolded) since the point of this post is to direct your attention to a fairly accurate description of the whole affair in an article entitled “People vs. Chemical Plant“ published by the China Internet Information Center. Admittedly, this is an organization which seeks to put a sunny face on China for the outside world, and I have not checked to see if a Chinese version is available, but still the article is pretty straightforward, candid, and relatively complete account of the Xiamen PX affair.

The only strange part of the piece is its conclusion:

Happy ending

On December 20, Lian Yue posted a statement on his blog saying that a win-win situation had been achieved. The government has regained the people’s support, and people have successfully safeguarded their rights. He himself had finished his job regarding this issue. He stated that he wouldn’t accept any further interviews on this topic any more. . . .

Wu Yumei, a house owner of Future Coast, told the Southern People Weekly: “Everything’s becoming better. The event is a milestone in China. We are lucky.”

Just what the “happy ending” is the article doesn’t clearly say, and the rather ominous future unavailability of Lian Yue could lead one to suspect he had been silenced.

The “happy ending” was only publicly confirmed recently:

Following persistent public protest, a controversial chemical project planned for the coastal tourist city Xiamen, Fujian Province, is likely to be relocated, [Xiamen] Mayor Liu Cigui said in Beijing on Friday. . . .

Liu added the PX plant “is still a good project” and in line with the industrial development scheme of the national government.” It should be moved to somewhere else, because Xiamen is short of land for the project construction.” Lu Zhangong, Fujian Province Party chief and NPC deputy, commended the Xiamen government on Friday for following public opinion. “The public are also right to express their concerns,” he said. . . .

Zhangzhou, another city in the province, has expressed a willingness to accept the PX plant. “Zhangzhou City is capable of constructing the plant,” said Mayor Li Jianguo. However, it is up to the investor to decide where to go.

Lian Yue has not been cowed it appears, and has recently spoken out, as reported by Danwei, on recent issues concerning the TAR (causing the more hidebound elements of the central government to argue, no doubt, that environmental activism leads ineluctably to less benign forms of activism).

Let me comment on one Environmental Law component of this story. An Environmental Impact Assessment was performed for this project and was approved by SEPA before the June 2007 protests. This project EIA apparently showed no or, at least, acceptable human health risks from the proposed facility. I don’t know what form of public input solicitation was used for this EIA, but I suspect it was a “survey.” To my knowledge this report has not been made public in its entirety.

After the protests, the local government apparently ordered a “regional environmental impact assessment” to be performed (addressed under Article 7 et seq.of the EIA Law, see right sidebar under “Laws & Regulations”) to address the feasibility generally of zoning the Haicang area as a chemical industrial zone. It is unclear whether the public hearings held in December were technically part of this regional EIA or were a belated hearing on the plant-specific EIA. I would suspect the former, except that the comments seemed to only address the environmental impacts of the proposed PX facility.  In any event, the hearings seem to have contributed to the “happy ending,” and were a triumph for participatory decision making.