Eco-protests halt chemical factory

ECO-PROTESTERS have halted the construction of a chemical factory in China with mass action against the global industrial machine.

Reports the BBC: "On Friday, crowds opposed to the expansion attacked police in the city of Ningbo in Zhejiang province.

"Officials from Ningbo's city government announced on Sunday evening that work on the project would now not go ahead.

"Environmental protests have become more common in China. They come ahead of a once-in-a-decade change of national leaders in Beijing.

"Protesters gathered again in Ningbo on Sunday, marching on the offices of the district government. They are opposed to the expansion of the plant by a subsidiary of the China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation."

"The huge growth in China's economy has come at a huge environmental cost. Many Chinese are becoming more environmentally aware and are deeply concerned about pollution, correspondents say."
 
The emergence and success of a powerful grassroots environmental movement in the world's most populated state will surely act as a massive inspiration for others across the world fighting the foul forces of greed and death.

Video - Chinese eco-protesters block major road

CHINESE protesters against a coal-powered power station have blocked a main road and defied riot police.

Reuters reports that the situation seems to have escalated, with residents smashing cars and hurling bricks even though officials sought to calm tempers by suspending the unpopular plan.

Angry crowds smashed and overturned police cars and riot police fired teargas in Haimen town in Shantou city on Wednesday, the second day of the unrest, Hong Kong newspapers reported.

Residents of Haimen, furious with plans to build a coal-fired power plant, took to the streets , surrounding a government building and blocking an expressway.

Officials agreed to suspend the project this week, but residents refused to back down, demanding the plan be scrapped.

Outside a large and closed petrol station near a highway into Haimen, about 100 men on motorbikes watched a wall of riot police armed with batons and shields, blocking the highway.

"What place in the world builds two power plants within one kilometre?" said one of the Haimen residents, who was surnamed Cai, as he watched the riot police.

"The factories are hazardous to our health. Our fish are dying and there are so many people who've got cancer , " he added.

"We thought of protesting outside the government office but we know none of them has listened to us. So we had no choice but to block the highway. The police beat up so many of the protesters in the past two days."

At one point, Haimen residents screamed and surged forward when a riot policeman, waving his baton in the air, charged towards a man on a motorcycle who had been riding towards the police blockade on the highway.

State news agency Xinhua said several hundred people had protested on a highway on Wednesday. According to Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper, more than 1,000 residents gathered at a toll gate to confront hundreds of riot police.

Witnesses said police fired four rounds of teargas and beat up protesters, who do not want another power plant when existing power facilities there were already polluting air and seawater and had greatly reduced their catch at sea, the report added.

At least three protesters were hit and arrested.

Adds Reuters: "People in China are increasingly unwilling to accept the relentless speed of urbanisation and industrialisation and the impact on the environment and health.

"Protests are also often held over corruption, wages and land seizures, that officials justify in the name of development.

"Residents of Wukan village, also in Guangdong, agreed to end a 10-day standoff with authorities over a land dispute on Wednesday."

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Chinese villagers rise up against authorities

CHINESE villagers have risen up in force, expelling corrupt local officials and taking on the police.

Reports The Daily Telegraph: "Trouble in Wukan has been brewing since September, after the village revolted at an attempt to take one of its last parcels of farmland and give it to a major Chinese property developer, Country Garden.

"However it was the death of 43-year-old Xue Jinbo, one of the village’s 13 temporary representatives, in police custody that pushed Wukan into its current fury, and saw the last of the village’s dozen Communist party officials flee. His family believe he was murdered.

"Wukan has been encircled by a police cordon since Sunday, after an attempt by 1,000 armed officers failed to retake the town. No food or water is allowed in, and no villagers are allowed out."

Adds The Financial Times: "Thousands of people from a southern Chinese village protested on Wednesday against the death in police custody of a popular local leader following a standoff over land acquisition and allegations of corruption.

"Xue Jinbo, 43, is believed to have died on the night of December 10. His family saw his body the following evening and reported that it showed signs of bruising – enraging Wukan village in Guangdong province. Local authorities say he died of cardiac arrest.

"Police have responded to the demonstration by blockading the village, residents said, and the term 'Wukan' was blocked on Chinese microblogging sites.

"For the provincial government of Guangdong, which as China’s most industrialised province has faced several protests by workers recently, bringing Wukan under control is proving particularly difficult. Villagers have been demanding the removal and punishment of local officials they claim were involved in a corrupt land deal."

“The police have blocked all the main roads now. We have to go the farthest way round via back roads when we get in and out,” a villager named Zhang told the Financial Times. “Even the rice store is running out. They cut off internet access last night and warned they would cut our electricity today. They haven’t yet.”

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Chinese villagers riot over pollution

 


RIOTS have broken out in China against a factory polluting local water as resistance grows globally to the neoliberal industrial nightmare.

Reports China Forbidden News: "Villagers in Haining city, Zhejiang province in China have held three days of protest against Jinko Solar Co. discharging heavy cancer-causing pollution.

"Villagers and journalists were beaten by company security. The protesters beat local officials and overturned four police cars. The police also fired tear gas.

"Online sources state that over 10 people are injured or dead.

"A human rights activist said that Chinese Communist Party' (CCP) system was causing the struggle in people's lives.

"The Jinko Solar company is a subsidiary of a New York Stock Exchange-listed Chinese solar company, fully financed by Hong Kong Paker Technology Co., Ltd.

"They produce solar wafers, cells and other products, exporting to more than twenty countries within Europe, Asia, and the United States.

"The plant is located in Haining city, Zhejiang province and Shangrao city, Jiangxi province.
There are over 10,000 employees and the plant covers more than 165 acres.

"Villagers blame the company for discharging polluted water and harmful gases into the environment, causing the massive deaths of fish floating in the river.

"Local villagers found that there were over 10 people who developed cancer as a result of the pollution."

Chinese riot on streets of Paris

CHINESE riotes clashed with French police in Belleville, Paris, on Sunday, in a protest against the violence experienced by their community.

Cops fire teargas and demonstrators overturned cars, blocked roads and set fire to rubbish in the road.

le75020.fr explains that the protest staged by the Collectif des associations franco-chinoises attracted between 8,500 (police estimate) and 15,000 (organisers).

According to the People's Daily Online this was the biggest ever protest by overseas Chinese.

Chinese workers are rebelling

CHINESE workers are rebelling against slave labour conditions in the rapidly industrialising state, report AFP and Angry News from Around the World.

Dozens of striking workers have been hurt in clashes with police in China as a fresh labour stoppage again halted Honda's production Wednesday, in the latest unrest to rock the "workshop of the world".

The latest labour action, which came after a spate of suicides at Taiwanese high-tech firm Foxconn, again drew attention to difficult conditions and low pay faced by millions of Chinese factory workers.

The clashes on Monday at a Taiwan-funded rubber factory in the eastern province of Jiangsu marked the first time in recent days that disputes over salaries erupted in violence, with state media saying 50 workers were hurt.

Some 2,000 workers at the KOK Machinery factory in the city of Kunshan outside Shanghai walked off the assembly line, demanding better pay and an improved working environment, the China Daily reported.

The injuries occurred when security forces tried to prevent the workers from taking their strike into the streets, the report said.

Photos of the incident showed police and special security forces massed outside the gates of the facility, preventing workers from exiting.

The paper said 50 workers were injured, five of them seriously.

"The police beat us indiscriminately. They kicked and stomped on everybody, no matter whether they were male or female," one female worker told the South China Morning Post, which said at least 30 people were arrested.

Workers were asking for hardship pay to compensate them for working in high temperatures, full workers' insurance, housing subsidies and a change to make work on Saturdays voluntary, according to postings seen in Chinese chatrooms.

Some of those postings were later deleted.

"We have to work in temperatures of 40 to 50 degrees Celsius (104 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit). They refuse to do anything about the heat," one worker told the Hong Kong-based Post.

"The smell from the rubber is unbearable, but we don't even get a toxic fumes subsidy."

Geoff Crothall of the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin linked the upsurge in labour strife to the general economic recovery, saying workers were less inclined to accept low pay, and facing long hours as orders picked up.

"We are finding in the last few years, particularly since the labour contract law in 2008, workers are more aware of their rights and more willing to stand up for their rights," Crothall told AFP.

"Workers just want to work somewhere that is not oppressive and is decent," he noted.

"I think labour activism in China comes in waves, but over the last few years, there's been an increase in the intensity and frequency of these waves."

Foxconn -- which counts Apple, Sony and Hewlett-Packard among its clients -- has agreed to a 67 percent pay hike for its hundreds of thousands of workers in China after 11 of them committed suicide, 10 in the southern city of Shenzhen.

Its parent company Hon Hai Precision Industry lost more than three billion US dollars in market value in two days this week as investors fretted over the pay increases.

Japan's number two automaker Honda Motor is reeling from more than a week of work stoppages in China -- first at its parts unit in Foshan, and then at an exhaust parts maker owned by a subsidiary -- that have disrupted production.

The first strike was resolved when Honda agreed to a 24 percent pay rise.

The second, at a joint venture factory in Foshan of Honda subsidiary Yutaka Giken and a Taiwanese firm, was ongoing Wednesday, forcing Honda to close two of its China assembly plants run by Guangqi Honda.