Peoples' zoning general uprising in China

Washington Post:

Violent protests erupted in several southern Chinese fishing towns after residents heard that a chemical factory rejected as environmentally dangerous by the nearby city of Xiamen would be built in their area instead, witnesses and other residents said Monday.

The protesters, who began their uprising peacefully Thursday, clashed repeatedly with baton-wielding police Friday and Saturday in several towns near the Gulei Peninsula, about 50 miles southwest of Xiamen on the Taiwan Strait, they said. A dozen people were injured and carried away for treatment in local hospitals, and about 15 were arrested, according to demonstrators and their family members.

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The protests continued Sunday and Monday but without violence, local residents said by telephone. By Monday, the local government sent officials circulating through the area with loudspeakers to deny the reports that the chemical factory was about to be built near their balmy seaside communities.

"The program has not been decided on yet," Huang Xiaowen of the Dongshan County Propaganda Department added in a telephone interview. "This cannot be decided by our county. It is the central government's duty to decide on this."

Construction of the $1.4 billion factory, planned by Tenglong Aromatic PX (Xiamen), began last year on a 300-acre tract on Haicang, an island just off Xiamen. But work was halted in June after a massive cellphone message campaign by environmentalists who invoked the city's reputation for sweet air and beautiful surroundings.

Their alarms generated several days of demonstrations in Xiamen streets that were widely reported in China and eventually caught the eye of officials in Beijing. Since then, the entire project has been suspended pending an environmental review by the central government under Premier Wen Jiabao.

The halt was hailed by protesters in Xiamen and elsewhere as a rare victory of public opinion over Communist Party bureaucrats for whom economic development normally is the top priority.

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Protesters gathered Thursday morning and staged a sit-in to block traffic on a main road. The protest had attracted about 10,000 people by nightfall, she added. At that point, county propaganda officials appeared on local television to assure the public that a chemical factory would not pose a danger and would boost the local economy.

"This really made people angry," she said.

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China's lack of democracy and its central control freak decision making is proving to be a combustible combination. Obviously the people are rejecting the Kelo style decision making. Kelo involved a US case where local a local government used eminent domain to seize private property for a business to develop in hopes of generating higher tax receipts. The results of the case was a rebellion against eminent domain for private use across the US. Unfortunately for the Chinese they do not have democratic institutions that permit them to seek redress of grievances. Violence and protest appear to be the only way to get the governments attention.