Ningbo protest, response both typical of China’s environmental debate

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/ningbo-protest-response-both-typical-of-chinas-environmental-debate/2012/10/29/ac4c8e5e-21f6-11e2-8448-81b1ce7d6978_story.html

NINGBO, China — Environmental protesters in the city of Ningbo, scene of violent weekend demonstrations, went back to work on Monday after the local government made a carefully calculated concession designed to defuse unrest over plans to expand a petrochemical complex.

The Ningbo government took a leaf from the same book as other Chinese cities when faced with protesters whose demands are environmental rather than broadly political: it announced a halt to plans to build a paraxylene facility at a petrochemical plant owned by a subsidiary of Sinopec, China’s biggest oil refiner, in the Zhenhai seaside area near Ningbo.

That concession largely emptied the streets of demonstrators in the eastern port city, leaving only small groups of curious onlookers outside the Ningbo government offices, where a large police presence prevented crowds from forming.

At the Zhenhai chemical industrial area, where a foul odor hung in the air, a handful of angry young men manned a makeshift barricade complaining that the local government had never followed through on a 10-year-old promise to pay a subsidy to local residents because of pollution.