Xinhua Insight: China needs public consultation amid painful protests
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E-mail Xinhua, July 31, 2012
By Xinhua writers Wang Yue, Xu Lingui and Zhang Zhanpeng
BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) -- Decades of acting as the world's manufacturing hub has taken its toll on China as the country struggles to balance economic growth and the fallout from environmental pollution.
The government in the eastern city of Nantong on Saturday canceled an industrial waste pipeline project hours after thousands of angry residents protested against the planned project in Qidong -- a city administered by Nantong and the site of the project.
The weekend demonstration turned violent after some protesters forced their way into the city government compound, where they overturned vehicles and threw documents out of windows.
Though the crowd disbanded after the cancellation was announced, the incident, which was just the latest one in a series of similar protests spurred by fears of environmental degradation, has stirred nationwide discontent and stoked calls for expanded citizen rights and sufficient consultation with local residents when assessing the environmental impact of proposed industrial projects.
PROTESTS ON THE RISE
China has entered a new era when people's tolerance toward polluting projects keeps shrinking, said Xie Shaodong, deputy head of the Environmental Sciences and Engineering College of Peking University.
Saturday's protest followed similar demonstrations against industrial projects in the southwestern city of Shifang earlier in July and in the northeastern city of Dalian last year.
Data from the Ministry of Environmental Protection showed that the number of mass demonstrations related to environmental concerns has increased at an annual rate of 30 percent.
More Chinese people are becoming aware of environmental risks. In the eastern province of Zhejiang, the government receives 50,000 to 60,000 petitions about such concerns annually, said Xu Zhen, director of the provincial environmental protection bureau.
Environmental concerns, along with land grabs and labor disputes, are currently the three biggest factors resulting in social conflict in China, said Shan Guangnai, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Alarmingly, the number of environmental protests is likely to continue to rise in the future, as some environmental risks will take even more time to expose, said Xu.
TRUST CRISIS
In early July, authorities in the city of Shifang halted construction on a 1.6-billion-U.S. dollar copper refinery following three days of protests by thousands of residents who feared the plant would poison them.
Both the copper plant in Shifang and the waste discharge project in Qidong were said by officials to have met national standards for environmental protection and were approved by authorities.
However, people still protested, as they apparently did not trust the assessment results, officials said.
Shifang residents are jittery at the mere mention of any new heavy metal project, as pollution caused by the phosphorus chemical industry there has already had a negative impact on them, said Zeng Shengqi, head of the city's environmental protection bureau.
Pollution left by dozens of local phosphate plants has not been properly treated, causing a loss of trust among local residents, Zeng said.
"People will only start to have faith in the assessment results after they see through their own eyes that the environment has been improved," Zeng added.
According to Ma Zhong, dean of the environmental school of the Renmin University of China, nearly 99 percent of projects planned by local governments have passed environmental assessments.
"If most of the projects are really up to environmental standards, then there shouldn't be annual pollution increases. It's not surprising that the assessments cannot convince people," Ma said.
Some protesters in Shifang believed that an "interest chain" affected the fairness of the copper plant's assessment, Zeng said.
Local officials usually support such projects in order to lure fresh investment and revenue into their jurisdictions, while environmental experts can be easily influenced by authorities, both of which have undermined public trust, said Mao Xianyong, former head of the Appraisal Center for Environment and Engineering under the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
Under the current environmental appraisal law, the company being appraised should hire certified agencies to assess the environmental impact of its projects, a practice that can result in companies "buying" assessment reports from those agencies, said Zhu Cailin, an appraisal expert.
SUFFICIENT CONSULTATION NEEDED
Zhang Wenxia, a resident of south China's city of Guangzhou, said she was frustrated last year when she and other local residents could not find a proper way to voice their opinions about a proposed garbage incinerator project in the Panyu district, where they live.
Zhang said they were never asked about their opinions on the project, nor did they see any dissenting opinions on TV or in newspapers.
All the government did was repeat the "pros" of the project, she said.
The amount of time spent consulting local residents is typically too short and the willingness to consult them is also weak, Xie said.
"According to international practice, it usually takes eight months to a year to gather public opinions when assessing a project's environmental impact. However, many local governments and companies try to finish the process in just one month," Xie said.
During an appraisal assignment, Xie's team handed out 8,000 questionnaires for a kitchen waste disposal project in a neighborhood of 100,000 people. Local officials complained that they sent out too many, adding that 200 copies would be enough.
"The local government and the company give too little time to the public and to themselves as well," Xie said.
Xie suggested that the government amend the law to stipulate what proportion of population should be surveyed regarding such projects.
Appraisal agencies should be punished more severely for forging assessment reports, said Zhu Qian, a professor at Jiangsu University. Enditem
(Xinhua writer Wang Pan also contributed to this story)
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