Angry farmers force closure of China plant (20,000 peasants stormed the factory)

Reuters ^ | 07/19/05

[TigerLikesRooster]

Tuesday July 19, 4:43 PM

Angry farmers force closure of China plant

BEIJING, July 19 (Reuters) - Chinese farmers have attacked a pharmaceutical plant and forced it to close, angered that its chemical waste was ruining their village's crops, polluting its river and harming their health, the factory and officials said.

The Jingxin Pharmaceutical Company in Xinchang county in the eastern province of Zhejiang has been closed since July 4 when a group of villagers stormed it, a company statement said, giving no details of how many were involved in the siege.

But a posting on a stock exchange online message board said 20,000 farmers in Xinchang rioted on Sunday after the company said it would resume production. The New York Times put the number at 15,000.

Another posting referred to the villagers' activity as an "environmental protection revolution".

Despite a Communist leadership intent on maintaining stability in the world's most populous nation, the standoff was the latest in a string of protests to rock rural China as the government grapples with anger over corruption and a growing gap between rich and poor.

Another riot in the same province in April was also sparked by factory pollution, underscoring the environmental price China is paying for its rapid rise to become the world's seventh-largest economy. ADVERTISEMENT

"Following the rapid development of Xinchang's industrial economy, the clustered population in the city and lessening rainfall in Zhejiang, the problem of pollution in the Xinchang River is increasingly severe," Jingxin's statement said.

An executive in the plant general manager's office confirmed that protests had forced the factory to suspend operations.

But the official, who declined to give his name, denied there were thousands of protesters, saying it was only a handful of what he called hooligans upset not over environmental damage but by what he said was the "unequitable social situation".

But he added: "We used to not be so careful about environmental protection. It's a historical problem."

A waste treatment plant due to have been opened in 2002 was still unfinished, probably adding to the farmers' anger, he said.

Police in Xinchang declined to comment and referred Reuters to the local Publicity Bureau, but calls there went unanswered.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Anger in China Rises Over Threat to Environment

By HOWARD W. FRENCH

Correction Appended

XINCHANG, China, July 18 - After three nights of increasingly heavy rioting, the police were taking no chances on Monday, deploying dozens of busloads of officers before dusk and blocking every road leading to the factory.

But the angry residents in this village 180 miles south of Shanghai had learned their lessons, too, they said, having studied reports of riots in towns near and far that have swept rural China in recent months. Sneaking over mountain paths and wading through rice paddies, they made their way to a pharmaceuticals plant, they said, determined to pursue a showdown over the environmental threat they say it poses.

As many as 15,000 people massed here Sunday night and waged a pitched battle with the authorities, overturning police cars and throwing stones for hours, undeterred by thick clouds of tear gas. Fewer people may have turned out Monday evening under rainy skies, but residents of this factory town in the wealthy Zhejiang Province vow they will keep demonstrating until they have forced the 10-year-old plant to relocate.

Click here for the rest of article from NYT

Three protesters, in plain clothes at bottom left nearest the camera, were arrested in Xinchang, near Shanghai, outside a pharmaceutical factory that they say is polluting their village's water.

Protesters, who say the pharmaceuticals factory at Xinchang pollutes their water, were blocked on Monday by police barricades. There is rising discontent in China with the authorities' failure to respond to grievances.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Ping!

[highlander_UW]

China has a HUGE problem with pollution...it's good that the people are beginning to stand up and complain about it.

[jneesy]

china has a huge problem with their people

i smell revolution in the air

its what happens when people get tired of being s#@t on

[Rebelbase]

"i smell revolution in the air "

I fear this one will be bloody, not like the Soviet Union's peaceful demise.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Re #5

Chinese has a name for it: Tian-xia-dai-luan.

Literally, it means, "great upheaval under the sky." It refers to a wholesale conflagration which envelopes China periodically in its history.

[.cnI redruM]

>>>>>"We used to not be so careful about environmental protection. It's a historical problem."


This sounds like what The Russians used to say before the Biakal Awakening. China will cripple itself in two ways if it doesn't straighten this situation out.

1) It will waste/contaminate a tremendous amount of its resource base.

2) It will p--s off its countryside and make people believe that the placement of polluting factories is a politically motivated phenomenon. Again, I reference the resistance the Soviets got over their government's contamination of Lake Baikal.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Some "environmental whackos" we can get behind.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Don't worry the sewage treatment plant when finished will take care of THAT problem.

[dfwgator]

90% of China's population still pretty much live the same way they did 100 years ago. They are mostly unaffected by the changes taking place in the big cities.

[norraad]

There's no excuse these days, any manufacturing process can be perfectly clean & closed cycle for almost no added cost.

These cheap goofy f's are just refabing old industrial crap that nobody should be using.

Go, peasants, go!

Kick some cheap bastard goofy f a$$!