Protests in southern China against incinerator plant

More than 1,000 citizens from Boluo county in southern China took to the streets at the weekend to protest against a planned rubbish incinerator and police made 24 arrests, state media reported.

It’s the latest example of citizens holding demonstrations against pollution, an issue of growing concern in China as economic growth translates into foul air and dirty rivers, and another example of the growing Nimby (not in my back yard) movement here.

Pollution is the single biggest source of complaint among young people, and most environmental protests these days tend to be carried out by educated, middle-class Chinese, worried about the danger to their families that environmental degradation can cause.

These people form a key demographic for the ruling Communist Party, which needs their support to ensure the party retains its grip on power. The party has acknowledged that rising public anger over environmental disasters – and there are tens of thousands of demonstrations every year – is a threat to stability.

"The protest was organised by a handful of lawless people and participated in by people who did not know the truth," according to a statement from the local public security bureau, carried in China Daily newspaper.

The police said they would deal leniently with lawbreakers who surrendered themselves or informed against others within three days, and eight of those detained were later released.

"We fear construction of a garbage incinerating plant will damage the environment and harm people's health," a resident of the city told the China Daily.

A spokesman for the Huizhou municipal government denied the site of the plant had already been decided, and said the planned ecological garden would contain refuse recycling, landfill, incineration and biological treatment facilities.

The municipal government of Huizhou will give full attention to the site selection and is soliciting opinions from all sides to make a law-based scientific decision, he added.

There have been several examples in recent years of limited action by middle-class protesters forcing a climb-down by local authorities, and often environmental issues are the contentious issue.

In 2007, demonstrators took to the streets of Xiamen, a city on China’s southeast coast, to protest against plans for a plant producing the chemical paraxylene. The protests became so high-profile that authorities backed down, and sought other locations for the plant.

In 2012 there was a violent demonstration in the city of Qidong, near Shanghai, over a planned waste pipe at a Japanese-owned paper factory.

Again the government backed down and cancelled the project.