How things work in China, Part 2

The Global Times reports on the closing of a cadmium plant in Hunan province due to public protests over severe pollution.  The story describes the frustration of people living close to the plant, who have been complaining about the toxic emissions for two years without a response from local officials.  There are two ways to look at this.  On the one hand, the public protests succeeded in getting the government to act and the plant closed.  On the other hand, it took two years to get any response.

Since the Global Times is an official organ of the Communist Party, I find it interesting how critical the story is of the local officials.  It seems clear to me that this is a way that the national government influences the behavior of provincial leaders.  It praises public protests and criticizes unresponsive local officials.

Two years of complaints and petitions against the pollution caused by the chemical plant were met with two years of silence by local authorities, culminating in a crowd of villagers marching to local government and police offices in late July.

The story describes the steps taken, presumably by the national government, to address the concerns of the local people.  These include compensation and free healthcare.  It then concludes with a blanket condemnation of recalcitrant local governments by an academic observer:

Zou Ji, deputy director of the School of Environmental Studies at Renmin University, attributed the negligence to the authorities’ lack of solutions or compensation.

“Local governments responded either wrongly or insufficiently, or didn’t act at all when it comes to dealing with public complaints,” Zou said, adding that the possibility of corruption can’t be ruled out.

“We can’t view Liuyang as an isolated incident, as the number of pollution-related mass incidents is increasing,” Zou said. “It would be a strategic mistake if the government doesn’t allocate resources to solve it.”