China Environmental Protest Turns Violent

     The environmental movement is still in its infancy in China.  China has no Environmental Protection Agency, no statutory protections, and there is little public accountability by state-owned businesses.  That leaves only one option for Chinese citizens who feel their health has been or is about to be threatened by environmental conditions, protests, which often turn violent.

     Although the Chinese government has worked hard to improve its international environmental protection reputation,  it has long sacrificed environmental concerns to boosting GDP by any means possible.  Manufacturing requires energy, and lots of it, and China leads the world in the construction of greenhouse-gas-spewing coal-fired generators.

    However, Chinese citizens may have latched onto an effective, if unorthodox by American standards, method fo containing environmental threats.  Faced with the construction of a vast new petrochemical plant in the the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo which would have manufacture the highly-volatile compound paraxyline, a known carcinogin, thousands of protesters gathered at the site and fought with police and pro-government forces and security personnel.  Scores were injured and many jailed, but it appears that the protests were successful. This protest follows another similar demonstration that resulted in the cancellation of another paraxyline manufacturing facility in Dalian, China, last year. It remains to see whether the Chinese government will take notice.