China Environmental Law

As I write, a protest is taking place in Guangzhou, against plans to build a waste incineration plant.  I don’t know much about the facts of the case, such as where is it in the planning process, has an Environmental Impact Assessment been performed, was the public consulted, were there hearings, etc.  But the demonstration is interesting for several reasons.

There are lots of environmental protests in China.  Most occur in rural locales; these rural protests can be violent.  They are usually motivated by people’s concern with threats to their own health or the health of their children posed by a polluting factory. They spill over when no one in power seems to care.  The protesters are left with no choice but to riot. They have reached the state of freedom where they have nothing left to lose, but their protests receive little publicity and are so issue- specific they have little chance of galvanizing action elsewhere.

The Guangzhou protest, like the PX protests in Xiamen and stroll in Chengdu, is more a NIMBY type protest.  It is organized by a relatively sophisticated middle class, and directly challenges the government’s decision making process, not some polluting plant’s operations (as in the usual rural protest.)  Moreover, this protest is getting lots of publicity.  The local press came to film the event (whether any footage is actually aired someone will have to tell me) and the event is being tweeted (this despite the fact Twitter is blocked in China) live.  I assume it is also being discussed on the domestic equivalents of Twitter.  Some people are simply passing on what they have heard from others, but some are definitely at the scene because they have submitted pictures.  Search hashtag #pylj for the stream and check out @ellachou and @mranti or check here for some translations.

It’s easy to get caught up in exciting events like this and overestimate their importance.  This protest won’t change China; it probably won’t even change Guangzhou too much, but it will change it a little.  These protests could possibly be avoided if the authorities complied with the laws that do give the people some voice in how decisions affecting the well-being of their environment are made.  It appears that those in power here simply assumed the plant would be built where they said it would be built, before it had completed all its necessary environmental reviews.  The genie is out of the bottle.  These protesters in Guangzhou are showing that local officials ignore the newly emboldened middle class at their peril.

Photo: @LEMONed