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PX protest in China

• The term, PX protest in China, refers to a series demonstration activities in different Chinese cities to protest the P-Xylene (PX) project.

Background Information

P-Xylene (PX) is a derivative of benzene. As one of the three xylene isomers, P-Xylene has more industrial applicability than the other two isomers, M-Xylene and O-Xylene, because it is a raw material in the production of other syntheses of various polymers, such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyester, parylene, and so on。

Global demand of P-Xylene (PX) has been sustainable increasing. Since 2006, global P-Xylene (PX) markets have been tight, and in Asian markets the demand of P-Xylene (PX) has been exceeded the supply of it, particular in China。

The P-Xylene (PX) market in China has still heavily relied on the import. Therefore, The government in China planned to build up more chemistry factories in order to increase the country’s capacity of P-Xylene (PX). However, due to the concern of the pollution to the environment and security risks, the project has suffered a series protests in many Chinese cities.

Protest Activities

2007 Xiamen P-Xylene (PX) Protest

Xiamen is the second large (prefecture-level) city in Fujian province which locates at the southeast coast in China. Xiamen city includes the rugged coast of the mainland from the northeast bank of the Jiulong River, two main islands, Xiamen island and Gulangyu island, and several small islands.

Xiamen city is one of the nation’s first five special economic zones. The city’s major industries include chemical materials, electronics, equipment manufacturing, and tourism. The Xiamen port is one of the most important seaports of foreign trade in China, and its container throughput ranked 8^th in the country in 2014.

P-Xylene (PX) Project Overview

The Xiamen P-Xylene (PX) project was invested by the Xianglu Tenglong Aromatic PX (Xiamen) Co. Ltd to construct a chemical plant in the Haicang district which is located at the west side of the Xiamen city, and approximately 10km from the downtown Xiamen and could produce at least eight hundred thousands tons of P-Xylene (PX) per year. It is the largest petrochemical project in the history of Xiamen.

The project was approved by the State Council of China in February 2004. One year after, it was passed the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report from the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) and was finally approved by the National Development and Reform Commission of China (NDRC), in July 2006. The whole approval process of the project did not get much attention by media, so the most of the residences in Xiamen had not idea about the project. 

March 2007, during the Lianghui period, 105 conventioneers jointly proposed a proposal to question the potential risk of the project and to suggest the relocation of it. The P-Xylene (PX) project soon became a hot topic in Xiamen.  

The proposal pointed out that firstly, due to the whole approval process of the project is not open to the public, the citizens in Xiamen are not able to get access to any information about the project. The Xiamen government and the investor of the project never gave any explanation whether the project can cause any security risk or environmental pollution. Secondly, the current site selection of the project is too close to the residential neighborhoods.Within a radius of 5 km from the factory, there are more than one hundred thousand residents, and the nearest residential neighborhood is only 1.5 km from the plant. However, the government in Xiamen did not give any response to the proposal.

Public Protest

PX Protest in Xiamen

Since May 2007, a message started to circulate in the social media which described the P-Xylene (PX) as dangerous as “atomic bomb”, and called on residents boycott the project. The message soon caused a great panic of the project. At the first, the government in Xiamen tried to delete this message and to block other sensitive words from social media, but it did not work. The opposition and panic of the P-Xylene (PX) project have become increasingly severe. On 30 May 2007, the local government announced to suspend and to reevaluate the P-Xylene (PX) project.

- June 1, 2007, residents marched through the streets to against the P-Xylene (PX) completely stop it. The demonstration lasted all day. There is no official statistic on the number of the protesters, but according to the protesters that the whole demonstration had approximately ten thousand participants. There was no violence or conflict during the demonstration.

- June 2, 2007, residents gathered in front of the Xiamen municipal building to continue to protest the project. Compared to the first day of the protest, this time the size of the protest was relatively small, only approximately one or two thousands people participated in it. Few conflicts happened between the protesters and the polices, five people were injured.

Responses to the protest

- Government. The local government held a press conference after the demonstration. In the conference, the government identified the demonstration illegal, but they did not arrest any protester; due to there was no violence and aggressive behavior during the demonstration.

- Media. The news coverage on the mainstream media, especially the cable media, focused on the suspension of the project, and hardly mentioned the demonstrations. The largest local media, Xiamen Media Group, echoed the government’s statement to persuade the public that do not continue the irrational behavior.

The social media played an important role in the demonstration. People used their cellphone to take pictures and videos and posted online. The government tried to delete the messages online and to block some sensitive words, such as P-Xylene, demonstration, but it did not stop the circulation of the messages. The P-Xylene protest in Xiamen soon became a hot topic on different social media in China.

- Society. Since the reform and opening-up policy, China has made great efforts to develop the heavy and light industry while neglecting the environmental problems. In recent years, the problem of environmental pollution has become more and more serious. The Xiamen P-Xylene (PX) protest is the first time that People's discontent on environmental problems broke out. It soon became a hot topic in the whole country.

Demonstration is a rare activity in China. As the first one of a series protests to the P-Xylene project, the Xiamen P-Xylene (PX) protest is also a precedent to encourage others to participate in social movements. 

Follow - up development

16 December 2007, the Fujian provincial government announced to relocate the P-Xylene (PX) project to Zhangzhou city that is a relatively small city with less population.

30 July 2013, an explosion ripped through the petrochemical plant. According to the local government, there was no report on casualties or chemical leaks.

6 April 2015, another explosion occurred at a pumping station in the plant, after leaking oil caught fire. The residences in 50kim away from the plant said that they felt a tremor from the explosion. According to the Xinhua News Agency, 177 fire engines and more than 800 firefighters were sent to the blaze. 14 people were injured and were taken to the hospital.

A Chinese media, Caixin, posted an article on their website. An anonymous interviewee, who works in the P-Xylene (PX) project, said that the local supervision department had found problems on the plant’s safety management before the explosion, but they did not pay attention to it. The article was deleted after few hours of its publish. Neither the local government nor the plant gave any further response.  

2011 Dalian PX Protest

Dalian is a port city in Liaoning province on the southeast coast of China and locates at the tip of Liaodong Peninsula. It is an important center of the heavy industry in China, including machine manufacturing, petrochemicals and oil refining, and electronics.

2.2.1. P-Xylene (PX) Project Overview

The Dalian P-Xylene (PX) project locates in the Dalian development area which is the first economic and technological development zone in China. In October 2007, the project started the construction of the petrochemical plant, and completed the construction on November 18, 2008. In May 2009, the plant went into operation. The whole project covers cover an area of 80 hectares, it produces at least 700,000 tons of aromatic hydrocarbons per year. It is the largest PX project in China. 

August 8, 2011, typhoon Muifa breached the dike of the petrochemical plant, and the residents who live in the nearby neighborhoods were asked to evacuate by the government which triggered the dissatisfied and anxious to the project. The citizens in Dalian queried whether the incident caused the leak of poisonous chemicals and whether the plant would cause more problem in the future, but the local authorities and the plant did not give response to the public.

July 16, 2010, in Dalian Port, an explosion of oil pipelines caused serious oil spill. 1,500 tons of oil had spilled and covered 180 square kilometers in the Yellow Sea. Only two months later, in October 24, a fire broke out at the same port. Hundreds of firemen used 15 hours to put out the fire, and the local media said that the fire caused six small explosions, but the number of explosions had not been confirmed by the government. Those two incidents had already caused the citizens’strong discontent, and the incident of the P-Xylene (PX) project eventually sparked the outrage. 

Public Protest 

Since August 8, the P-Xylene (PX) project became a hot topic in Xiamen. The Internet and social media provided a great public sphere for the communication, and the residences in Dalian through the social media organized a demonstration to against the project.

In the morning of August 14, 2011, twelve thousand residences gathered in the People's Square to protest. They requested the government to shut down and to relocate the petrochemical plant.

At 10 a.m., the Secretary of Dalian Municipal Committee, Jun Tang, came to the People's Square with a promise to shut down the plant and to move it out of the city. However, when the protesters asked a deadline for the closure and the removal of the plant, he did not response and just mollified the protesters to trust the local government. Then the protesters shouted to him "Get out!" and "We want action".

By 2 p.m., the local government announced that they already shut down the plant, and premise to relocated the P-Xylene project again. However, they still refused to disclose the new location of the project and the schedule of the relocation. Therefore, the protesters refused to end the demonstration, and continuing gathered in the square.

The protest remained peaceful during the daytime. However, in the evening, when the policeman started to disperse the protesters, conflicts broke out. Some of the polices used force to disperse the protesters. The local polices arrested some protesters during the conflicts. They refused to clarify how many people were arreste and said that most people were released soon after the end of the protest. 

Media Coverage 

During the protest, The local government banned media from entering the protest area. Most of the traditional media used the official press release from the Xinhua News Agency which is the official press agency in China.

Compare to the silence of the traditional media, social media are the main platform for the publish and spread of the information. People has already known how to deal with the censorship and the regulation on the Internet. For example, when the government blocked the sensitive words, such as protest, demonstration or Dalian P-Xylene (PX) on the social media, people used the word, stroll, to describe the demonstration.

Follow - up development

In early December 2012, a leaked document was circulated online shows that the plant was preparing to resume production. A Chinese newspaper, the Beijing News, interviewed an anonymous worker, who works in the plant, and the worker said that the plant has resume production for almost one year.

Few days after, the local government claim that they were still planning on the relocation of the plant, but it need to take some time.

2012 Ningbo PX Protest

Ningbo is a sub-provincial city in Zhejiang province on the southeast coast of China[]. It locates in the south wing of the Yangtze River Delta economic zone. 

P-Xylene (PX) Project Overview

2009, the Ningbo government approved a petition submitted by the China Petrochemical Corporation (also called Sinopec Corp.) with the plan to expand a petrochemical plant in order to produce and to degrade more P-Xylene (PX). The petrochemical plant locates in Ningbo Petrochemical Economic & Technological Development Zone. It is a state-level economic and technological development zone and includes Zhenhai Refining & Chemical, LG Yongxing (Korea), Akzo Nobel (Holland), Daan Chemical (Japan), Zhongjin Petrochemical, Sinochem Chemical and many other chemical companies.

Since its establishment, the Petrochemical Economic & Technological Development Zone has caused a number of environmental pollution issues. In September 2007, the spill of 400 tons of acrylonitrile caused serious pollution to the groundwater. By the end of April 2012, the illegal discharge of toxic gas caused the death of 3 million bees in a farm. The most surrounding areas of the development zone are farmland. The environmental pollution issues have seriously affected the harvest. Therefore, since the local government announced the expansion plan, the villagers who live nearby the petrochemical plant have committed numbers of small-scale protests against the expansion of the plant. However, the local government neither paid any attention nor gave any response to the protests.

Public Protest 

The protest started from October 2016, 200 villagers blocked a street next to the petrochemical plant. They asked the government to stop the expansion project and to respond to the previous pollution incidents. By October 26, the number of protesters increased to thousands, and some of the protesters gathered in front of the government building. The local polices used tear gas to disperse the protesters, and some of the protesters pounded the polices with stones.

The local authorities announced that they suspended expansion plant.