People Power: Chinese Standing Up To Growing Pollution

[Playinghardball]

police car lies overturned as protesters occupy a government building during a protest against an industrial waste pipeline under construction in Qidong, Jiangsu Province July 28, 2012.

Thousands of Chinese protesting against pollution from a huge paper factory in eastern China have taken to the streets as rising public anger over environmental threats grows.

The protesters claimed victory Saturday as the Chinese officials canceled the industrial waste pipeline project after the demonstrators occupied a government office, destroyed computers, overturned cars and threw documents out the windows to loud cheers from the crowd.

The sewage pipe from the paper mill discharges in the port of Lusi, one of four fishing harbors in Qidong.

Later Saturday hundreds of police, some in riot gear, arrived in the coastal town just north of Shanghai and took up positions outside the government offices.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/07/28

[freshwest]

1. I hope they can turn the tide on this. There are people dying in conditions as bad as in our past.

[reformist2]

2. We could help by punishing US companies that buy from that paper factory.

[Igel]

3. Don't.

This is a normal kind of thing. As incomes grow up, quality of life issues loom larger. People are willing to trade off some increased income for increased QoL.

This happened in the US in the late '50s and early '60s, accelerating as it went. Plants were cleaning up their act, and many of the worst problems were being worked on already. As with most important things, the legislation rode the movement for change. Even by the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire, sort of a landmark event, the photos they ran of "the fire" were actually of one of the bad ones in the 1950s (common knowledge now, but even when I was in school we were still told it was the actual '69 fire that we were seeing pictures of--thanks, Time Magazine). That kind of fire probably couldn't have happened on the Cuyahoga in '69.

Let the Chinese change their own society. They'll be better off for it in all but the very short run, and maybe even then--what you don't want to do is have the Chinese government think it's being forced to do something by outsiders.

[reformist2]

4. OK, but when the Chinese government squashes this rebellion, then I'll go back to my original pov.

[Zalatix]

5. Oh, please. So many errors in your statements..

China doesn't need our companies there to help them along. We can leave and they can handle their own business. Unless you think they're just too weak.

U.S. corporations will pressure them into squashing these protests. And China, unlike America, is NOT democratic. Never will be.