nuclear-news

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 Universityof 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…….

“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.” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-14/china-protest-forcing-nuclear-retreat-shows-people-power.html