CHINA HAS backed down on a planned copper alloy plant in a Sichuan city after days of protests by residents worried the plant would endanger the local environment. Photographs of riot police attacking protesters caused widespread anger online.
Earlier the government had threatened to come down hard on protesters, warning them to safeguard social stability and not to spread rumours.
There is heightened sensitivity this year about any signs of instability because of a high-level power transition in the autumn, which will see vice-president Xi Jinping take over the leadership from president Hu Jintao.
In recent years Chinese people have become more outspoken against environmentally risky projects in their cities and towns.
The protest was a startling sight, as many of the demonstrators standing outside the factory earlier this week were carrying colourful umbrellas.
Things quickly turned ugly, however. Riot police moved in on Monday to break up the gathering by thousands of people in front of a city government building.
Demonstrators overturned police cars and fought running battles with the riot police. People throughout China were angered by photographs online of riot police firing stun grenades and using tear gas against crowds which included schoolchildren and the elderly.
Initially the government said it would suspend the project by Sichuan Hongda but in the face of people power it decided to abandon the plant.
“The molybdenum-copper alloy factory will no longer be built in Shifang city,” it said in a statement on Sina Weibo, the official, Twitter-style microblogging site.
“At present, the . . . mass incident has basically been brought under control and the majority of people have dispersed,” it said. “Mass incidents” are what public security officials call public disorder.
Social unrest and protests are common in China at this time of year.
Last week, hundreds of migrant workers rioted, fought with police and clashed with local people in China’s southern economic engine of Guangdong province after a young migrant boy fought with a villager.
Pollution problems are a leading cause of unrest in China as the country’s swift economic rise is accompanied by often appalling environmental problems.
The air in most cities is foul, the rivers are poisoned and pollution is the single biggest source of complaint among young people.
Often, environmental protests are carried out not by angry farmers but by middle-class Chinese worried about the danger to their families that environmental degradation can cause.
There have been several examples in recent years of limited action by middle-class protesters forcing a climbdown by local authorities, with environmental matters are often the contentious issue.
China’s growing middle class is the core support for the Communist Party and the government has to be wary of angering it too much as the party needs its backing if single-party rule is to continue functioning in China.
The case bears parallels with a similar protest in the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian last year, when 12,000 demonstrators protested against a petrochemical plant that caused a toxic spill scare.
And attempts to build a giant hydrocarbon plant in the city of Xiamen in Fujian province were foiled by a major middle-class demonstration on the streets in 2007.
The government blamed the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong and the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama for trying to unsettle people in the town and cause unrest in China.
