China Protest Forcing Nuclear Retreat Shows People Power; China currently has 17 nuclear power-generating units in operation and 28 under construction

China Protest Forcing Nuclear Retreat Shows People Power

Protests in a southern Chinese city last week that forced local authorities to abandon plans for a uranium-processing facility highlight the growing willingness of ordinary people to challenge the state on environmental issues.

The proposed Longwan Industrial Park project won’t be approved “in order to fully respect the opinion of the masses,” the government of Heshan, Guangdong province, said in a statement on its website on July 13. A “social-stability risk assessment” of the proposal that was released for public awareness generated “much opposition,” it said.Heshan is the latest local authority to back down in the face of pressure from a public increasingly empowered by its ability to sway officials who fear social unrest. Governments in cities across the country have canceled or delayed plans for industrial projects over the past year after confrontations with residents concerned about safety and pollution.

“Chinese civil society is getting stronger,” said Willy Wo-Lap Lam, an adjunct professor of history at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “People now realize if their numbers are big enough, if they are united and stand their ground, the government will back down,” he said.

Opposition to the uranium facility underscores growing concern among China’s expanding middle class that industrial plants damage the environment and people’s health. Pollution has replaced land grabs as the primary cause of social unrest with many of the protests erupting in more prosperous coastal cities such as Shanghai and Ningbo where residents have deployed smartphones and used social media to organize their campaigns.

Party’s Survival

President Xi Jinping, who is also head of the ruling Communist Party of China, said last month that “winning or losing public support is an issue that concerns the CPC’s survival or extinction,” according to a June 18 report by the official Xinhua News Agency. Xi spoke at a conference about a year-long campaign starting in the second half of this year to improve ties between the party and the people, Xinhua said.

Heshan authorities backed down over the 37 billion yuan ($6 billion) uranium-processing project a day after more than 1,000 demonstrators rallied outside government offices in Jiangmen city, which administers Heshan. China National Nuclear Corp. and China General Nuclear Power Group had planned to build the 229-hectare (566-acre) plant to enrich uranium and fabricate fuel, according to an earlier statement on the Jiangmen government’s website.

Improve Communications

Officials initially pledged to extend a consultation period to 20 days from 10 and improve communications with the public before announcing on July 13 that they had scrapped the project.

Telephone calls to the media offices of state-owned China National Nuclear and China General Nuclear weren’t answered outside normal business hours yesterday. Questions faxed to the companies on July 12 seeking comment weren’t answered and three calls to the Jiangmen government that day went unanswered.

“The current central government has requested economic development must be pursued with environmental protection and at the same time social stability is a line that can’t be crossed,” said Ma Jun, a Beijing-based environmentalist and founder of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. “It’s evident that in this case the local government largely acted to keep social stability.”

Resume Approvals

Protests in Shanghai in May forced battery maker Shanghai Guoxuan New Energy Co. to abandon plans for a factory on the outskirts of the city. Demonstrations in the southwestern city of Kunming took place the same month to oppose plans for a petrochemical plant planned by China National Petroleum Corp.

China’s State Council said in October it would resume approvals of nuclear-power plants after a suspension imposed in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami that crippled the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant in Japan in March 2011. The world’s largest energy consumer intends to more than triple its nuclear-power capacity by 2015, according to a government white paper released that month.

The country currently has 17 nuclear power-generating units in operation and 28 under construction, Xinhua said in a July 13 report. The Heshan facility would have been the first nuclear-fuel-processing plant on the southeast coast and would have supplied the power plants of Dayawan, Taishan and Yangjiang, Xinhua said. China has built most of its processing facilities in the west of the country and most of its generating plants in eastern coastal regions, the report said.

“In future, especially in coastal developed regions, these kinds of public demonstrations may be the norm as we’ve seen in the West, where such projects face growing ‘not in my backyard’ sort of opposition,” said Ma. “In the future, large projects in China will need a longer and longer time to get approved like they do in the West.”

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Nerys Avery in Beijing at navery2@bloomberg.net; William Bi in Beijing at wbi@bloomberg.net