“Officials in the coastal city of Ningbo, China, promised on Sunday night to halt the expansion of a petrochemical plant after thousands of demonstrators clashed with the police during three days of protests that spotlighted the public’s mounting discontent with industrial pollution,” reads a New York Times article from Oct. 28.
From the video clips uploaded on Renren—a Chinese version of Facebook—you can see that several people protesting in front of the city government hall were arrested and beaten by the police. In order to put down the protest, the government dispatched groups of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) and assigned them to the most populous areas in the city to control the situation. The town of Zhen Hai, where the petrochemical plant was supposed to be established, was blocked from receiving outside information because of the protest. The violence the government uses against the masses exacerbates the antagonism.
Given that I was born and raised in Ningbo, this insurgence concerns me. I have been tracking the status of the incident on Renren, the site on which most of my friends from Ningbo post and repost the comments, pictures, and videos of the protest. The mainstream reactions to the incident included criticism of the government and calls to release those arrested and protect the Ningbo. However, some people responded differently to the incident. Some college students used chemistry theories to explain that a petrochemical plant actually would not cause as much damage to the environment as most expected. Some “Netizens” expressed their distrust in mass movements to solve the issue and were worried that some people would turn the whole thing into a violent revolt. Others claimed that even if Ningbo citizens successfully forced the government to cease the program, this chemical plant would ultimately be implemented in other areas.
While the effects of the media and the Internet are undeniable, it is also crucial that pressure is applied to the government. Although the Internet makes it possible to follow news updates and read alternative perspectives on the issue, it frequently leads to participation in a theoretical debate over environmental issues, rather than physical involvement in the protest. Unlike last year’s Occupy Wall Street protest, in which the protestors’ goal to increase income equality could only be achieved through long-term political activism, the Ningbo protest against the petrochemical plant has a clear objective: the immediate termination of the program. Ningbo citizens, according to my observations, are not politically demanding; given that they’ve been through extensive industrial expansion and pollution, all they want is just to stop the expansion; direct confrontations are the way to pressure the government into responsive action.
On Oct. 28, Chinanews announced that the government of Ningbo had decided not to introduce the petrochemical plant. Shortly after that, several Ningbo citizens voiced the suspicion that the temporary concession was just a trick pulled off by authorities.
This demonstrates how the government’s censorship policies can ultimately backfire. China earns its reputation of being restrictive with information by blocking sites like Facebook and The New York Times. Such censorship leads not only to a lack of information (even though people get access to these websites through proxies regardless), but also to the manipulation of that information. For citizens, the cost of obtaining the truth involves verbal attack, government denial, and even bloodshed. For Chinese officials, concealing such information actually places their own authoritarian privilege at risk.
In calculating the implementation of certain policies in China, both the cost of reaching a consensus and the cost of putting down a revolt are taken into account. In the United States, issues are put on the table to be debated. However, in China, the government often goes against public interests, avoiding the cost of reaching an agreement and the sacrifice of its own material interests. However, as the masses gradually obtain agency, it is going to be increasingly hard for authorities to underestimate the political detriment of direct confrontation with discontented masses. A pure environmental protest is likely to evolve into one calling for human rights and political freedom.
The protest against anti-environment industrial expansion in Ningbo signifies both the strengths and weakness of the technological improvements to leading a rebellion. Moreover, it implies the inefficacy of the existing political and social system and the vulnerability of the Chinese government.