Green challenge to China's
mega-projects By Candy Zeng
SHENZHEN, China - Local governments in
China, keen on attracting big investment projects
to boost local economies, are starting to listen
to a public increasingly concerned with potential
environmental hazards.
Some projects, such
as a chemical plant planned for Xiamen, in
southwestern Fujian province, are being shelved,
suspended or relocated due to public objections. A
US$5 billion Sinopec-Kuwait oil joint-venture
refinery proposed for Guangzhou, in Guangdong
province, is at the center of one such dispute.
The public's expanding chorus of
environmental concerns is pushing the central
government to rethink its investment policies.
During the just-closed annual sessions of
the National People's
Congress
(NPC), deputies Li Miaojuan, director of the
Guangdong Provincial Development and Reform
Commission, and Chen Min, vice chief of the
Provincial Environmental Protection Bureau, told
Xinhua News Agency that the planned oil refinery
in Guangzhou won't be launched before winning
approval from the nation's environmental
protection authority.
The refinery,
designed to process 15 million tonnes of crude oil
annually and scheduled to be built in Guangzhou's
Nansha district, at the throat of the Pearl River
Delta, involves China Petroleum and Chemical
Corporation, the Guangdong government and Kuwait
National Petroleum Co.
Just before the NPC
annual sessions, 14 local legislators in Guangdong
called for a rethink of the project, citing
potential pollution of the Pearl Delta.
Liu Yiling, director of a provincial
government-funded center of research on
environment protection, said the project would
worsen air quality in the delta and harm Nansha's
already fragile environment. "Nansha is in the
heart of the delta. The project will have
substantial impacts on not only Guangzhou and
Shenzhen, but Zhongshan, Dongguan and Hong Kong as
well," said Liu, citing important urban centers
and in the province.
Tian Rugeng, a
retired urban planning expert in Shenzhen, has
submitted an analysis to the provincial
government, opposing the launch of the Nansha
project, citing its proximity to heavily populated
cities in the region.
"The project is
located 68 kilometers from the center of
Guangzhou, but only 40 kilometers from the center
of Shenzhen, 37 kilometers from Yuen Long in Hong
Kong, 40 kilometers from Macau, and 31 kilometers
from Zhuhai," said Tian.
Beyond pollution,
Tian is concerned about the safety of the project.
"The transportation of the whole delta would be
paralyzed should there be any major accidents in
Nansha." He suggested sighting the refinery in a
less developed area along the Guangdong coastline
and away from the delta.
The project was
approved by the National Development and Reform
Commission (NDRC) at the end of last year. About
eight square kilometers of land has been reserved
by the Nansha district government, with all
residents there being removed.
As disputes
continue on the project's environmental
side-effects, the prospects of Nansha refinery
being built may become as blurred as those of the
suspended paraxylene (PX) plant in Xiamen.
Xianglu Group planned with the permission
of Xiamen municipal government to invest 10.8
billion yuan (US$1.5 billion) in PX production in
the city's Haicang district. Construction began in
November 2006 with NDRC approval. Then the public,
concerned at the proximity to residential areas,
and some experts, began to air their protests
through various channels. Alerted by mobile-phone
short-messaging helped to bring thousands of
people onto the streets.
During the NPC
annual session last March, 105 members of the
Chinese People's Political Consultative
Conference, the country's top political advisory
body, signed a petition urging relocation of the
chemical plant. Later, on the first two days of
last June, more than 5,000 Xiamen residents "took
a walk" together to the local government offices
in a silent protest against the project.
By the end of last year, Fujian provincial
and Xiamen municipal governments decided to halt
construction of the chemical plant and planned to
relocate it to the less-developed Gulei Island of
Zhangzhou, also in Fujian. The relocation has yet
to win central government official approval.
The mainland's financial hub, Shanghai, is
also having to contend with residents as it seeks
to develop its infrastructure. During this year's
NPC sessions, mayor Han Zheng told reporters that
a controversial extension of the high-speed Maglev
train line has not been included in the list of
the city's major investment projects for 2008. The
municipal government has to further consult the
public and obtain a professional assessment on the
feasibility of the project, according to Han.
Residents opposed on health concerns a
plan to extend the existing Maglev train line
starting from Shanghai's Hongqiao Airport to
Hangzhou, the capital of nearby Zhejiang province.
The German-designed Maglev train, which is driven
by magnet technology, is intended to operate 300
meters away from residential areas, but in this
case the line was to be built only 22.5 meters
from the nearest homes. In March 2006, thousands
of people "took a walk" on the streets together to
protest against the project.
A plan by US
giant DuPont to build a $1 billion titanium
dioxide plant in Dongying, Shandong, south of
Beijing, has also been challenged. The plant's
disposal of chemical waste by underground
injection, though declared by DuPont as exclusive
and state-of-art, was regarded as a way of
transferring instead of reducing pollutants.
Opponents are also worried about the release of
carcinogenic dioxin, and claim the project doesn't
fit into the country's goal of seeking sustainable
development.
A government work report by
Premier Wen Jiaobao, that includes consideration
of major government tasks this year, stressed the
importance of environmental protection by listing
10 specific sub-tasks ranging from closing highly
polluting plants with low productivity to
increasing public awareness of environmental
protection.
Following Wen's high-profile
report, many NPC delegates, from areas as diverse
as rich provinces like coastal Jiangsu to backward
areas such as the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in
the far west, demonstrated their willingness to
reject substandard investment projects in the name
of environment protection rather than pursue
economic growth at the cost of the environment and
natural resources.
From the second half of
2007, the central government delivered a series of
policy adjustments to discourage pollution and
high-energy consumption. Last June, export tax
rebates were scrapped for 1,115 products and
export taxes introduced for more than 300
products.
Guidelines were also introduced
from December 1, 2006, restraining entry of
foreign-invested enterprises in high-pollution and
high-resource-consumption projects. More recently,
the State Environmental Protection Administration
issued a directive requiring environmental
protection audits on companies before initial
public offerings or refinancing. Plans by Hong
Kong-listed Zijin Mining to issue shares in the
mainland market were rejected last month by
China's securities watchdog for not meeting the
newly set green thresholds for floating shares.
Even so, public outcries and environmental
protection pressures have not prevented local
governments from remaining the largest advocates
of massive chemical plants, infrastructure work
and power plants, along with other projects that
boost local economic growth and employment.
A leader in Nanshan district of Guangzhou
once said in defense of a refinery project that
the larger a chemical plant is, the less polluting
it would be. Li Miaojuan, of the Guangdong
Development and Reform Commission, commented that
the Nansha refinery project is important to
Guangdong, as the highly industrialized area
imports 10 million tons of refined oil products.
The trade-off between environment and
economic growth is more critical in the debate
over hydropower development of the Nujiang
(Salween) River. The upper Nujiang River in
southeast Yunnan province is listed as world
natural heritage. The local government wants to
use the waters for hydropower development to
improve the well-being of the poor people.
To visitors, "A power plant may ruin the
picturesque Nujiang gorge. But is that all that
conservation means, to have our people wearing
animal skins for others to watch and enjoy?" said
the provincial Communist Party Secretary Bai
Enpei.
These disputed projects have one
thing in common - they are all waiting for
assessment reports made by the environmental
protection authority. It could be a long wait. Pan
Yue, deputy director of the State Environmental
Protection Administration, which has been just
upgraded as a cabinet ministry, commented during
the NPC sessions that laws and regulations on
environmental protection appraisals have yet to be
detailed and improved.
Candy
Zeng is a freelance journalist based in
Shenzhen, China. (Copyright 2008 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
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