Space, Civic Capacity, and the Rise of NIMBY Environmental Movements in China:
The Cases of Xiamen PX and Shanghai Maglev Protests
Ching-Ping Tang
Introduction
It is less surprising to observe the surge of victim protests in China. Although
participating in collective protests (literally jitixing shijian in Chinese) is still a taboo in
this authoritarian regime and thus may inflict great personal costs, many reasons
have made such collective actions possible. Anger about unjust deprivation of
belongings and/or jeopardy on health tended to overwhelm the concerns of terrible
consequence. When there was a critical mass in action, potential participants would
feel safer to jump in. In the meantime, expectation on the compensation also
offered a material incentive for the victims to take actions, while primary social tie in
grassroots level might help overcoming possible free-riding problems. Furthermore,
mobilization in grassroots level with limited geographical dispersion also involved less
communication costs and was easier to share the feeling of discontent.
All these
factors should play a role in the breakdown of the social control mechanisms that the
ruling party has long deployed to prevent the organization of collective protests from
happening.
The emergence of mass protests against locally unwanted land-use projects (so
called “LULUs”) in urban areas indicates a remarkable advancement of societal
autonomy after the drastic setback since Tiananmen Square Crackdown of 1989.
1
Harsh crackdown in that incident drew a distinctive redline for the society and
intimidated the society to express its preference by collective protests. While
aforementioned victim protests can be considered as an essential breakthrough of
the political taboo, they were less political sensitive because of their pursuance of
parochial self-interests. In contrast, newly emerged Not-In-My-Backyard (hereafter
NIMBY) protests involved more public spirit, posed greater threat to the authority,
and thus had broader political implication. How the public authorities responded to
these challenges and how the society might strengthen its efficacy are thus worthy of
scrutiny.
By examining two most prominent NIMBY protests, this paper discusses how
deterritorialized environmental movements have been possible, why the regime has
responded positively, and what implication would be in building civic capacity in this
authoritarian regime with rapid transition. In the following paragraphs, the
relationship between space and different types of environmental movements will be
discussed. Based on a state-society framework, the discourse on enhancing
accountability via building civic capacity will be brought up. After the theoretical
deliberation, narratives of two cases will follow. Analysis and remarks will ensue to
conclude this intellectual journey.
Territory, Civic Capacity, and Environmental Movements
Along the spectrum of public-spirit and geographic disperse, three kinds of
environmental movements can be identified: victim protests, NIMBY protests, and
conservation campaigns.
1. Victim Protests
2
On the one pole, there are victim protests which involve grassroots protesters
concentrating in a relative small area, i.e. residents nearby polluting sources. Such
feature of geographical concentration, according to Mancur Olson (1965), enjoys
some benefits in mobilizing collective actions. First, potential participants can save
essential costs in transportation and communication in taking actions. Second,
face-to-face interaction, prevailing social norms, and existing social networks may
generate solidary pressure to prevent possible free-riding behaviors. In game
theoretical terms, the folks have to interact with each other in the long term, and
thus are engaging in a repeated game so that cooperation could be the best strategy.
Third, it is easier for leaders to emerge naturally in such primary groups with a
greater level of trust. Existing social elites with advantageous status usually are the
major sources of authority that folks rely on in case of emergency. If they enjoys
charisma and entrepreneur spirit, they can easily assume leadership in collective
action by offering visions for the future and by preventing possible shirking behaviors.
In game theoretical terms, the leaders create an “assurance game” scenario to solicit
engagement from the followers.
In an authoritarian context, the major hurdle against successful mobilization of
protests seems to be the expected crackdown of the authority and the tremendous
costs that individual might inflict. The fear of losing personal freedom, suffering
from long-term harassment, or even “vaporizing”, have all been so strong that mere
imagination of possible material rewards such as compensation might not work in
promoting participation. A competent leader, therefore need not only to be
persuasive in providing a bright future for the protests, but also to trigger emotional
response to overwhelm rational calculation. Strong impulse of anger and resentment
associating with injustice and betrayal promises reckless engagement in action to
3
change the status quo. Overall, geographic concentration, victim status, and capable
leader have been critical determinant for the collective protests to emerge in an
authoritarian regime.
2. Conservation Campaigns
On the other pole of spectrum, there are conservation campaigns as another
type of environmental movement. Although sometimes participants of this sort
come from grassroots communities, such ideal-oriented goals as protecting
endangered species, conserving biodiversity, or curving global warming tend to
attract participants across geographical boundary. These goals are not directly
associated with personal interests. Rather, they are public goods or interests that
will be widely shared by those who reject to have fair contribution. In contrast,
those who participate have to pay personal costs in such campaign scarifying
immediate self-interests for long-term public interests. The incentives behind the
actions would therefore be less about material rewards, but about value or identity
sharing, as the literature of “new social movement” has described. Nor would the
targeted participants be emotional or feverish like victims. The solidary pressure
from social ties would also be very less likely to take effect in such a scenario with
widely spread participants.
The above features associating with geographically diffused distribution of
supporters inevitably impose tremendous challenges in organizing a collective action.
The hurdles against broad-based mobilization includes identifying and sharing
information among potential participants, coordinating actions among actual
participants, paying the transportation costs for participation, and monitoring and
preventing free-riding individuals.
These tasks can most possibly be carried out in
4
an organized manner, achieved by an agency that enjoys great publicity and social
trust to solicit resources and engagement from different geographical corners.
Nevertheless, there should also be some preconditions for such organizations to
emerge and function well. As referred to by Tarrow (1996: 394) and Stone (2001:
590), “civic capacity” has been the broad-brush concept to indicate such variables as
political culture (Shinn, 1999), institutional environment (Skocpol, Ganz, and Munson,
2000), social relations (Putnam, 1993), and overall citizen quality (Weissberg, 2001)
that might affect the deliberation and pursuance of collective interests.
In western society where civic capacity is huge, conservation campaigns are
mostly organized by a variety of membership organizations, including peak
associations in the capital to advocate germane public policies as well as regional or
local agencies for issues fitted to smaller geographical concerns. Many new
democracies, such as Taiwan and South Korea in Asia, Czech and Poland in Europe, or
Chile in Latin America, have also witnessed essential growth in the number of civic
associations and the increasing influence of conservation movements that these
associations have campaigned for.1 Such organizations and associated activities tend
to pose great threats to an authoritarian regime like the one in China.
Mass
mobilization has been the privilege of the public authority to promote patriotism.
Collective actions, spontaneous or planned, are still taboos that might face harsh
crackdown. Organizations that are required to promote such movements were either
prohibited to exist or subject to close surveillance.
Consequently, conservation movements were still very limited in China. While
1
Take Taiwan for example, the number of civic associations grew six times in the past two
decades, from 1536 in 1992 to 9248 in 2010. Many environmental associations have been actively and
successfully prevented developmental projects from destroying essential habitats for endangered
species. For details and examples, see Tang, 2003; Tang and Tang, 2008.
5
some did emerge, they were less able to be in form of protests, and the advocators
usually had to have strong political networks and enjoyed strong but subtle supports
from international organizations. One prominent case is the campaign against Dams
on Nu River, in which major leaders were second generation of celebrities, and their
appeals had been echoed by many international organizations. Most importantly,
the campaign was not done by mass mobilization on the street. Instead, they were
most in forms of official petition, collecting signatures, criticism and debates on the
web, and news releases through mass media. Besides, the involved environmental
organizations used to have friendly interaction or even worked closely with the
governmental agencies in other cases, and thus made their objection in specific
occasion looked less malicious.
Types
Victim Protests
NIMBY
Civic Environmentalism
Interest
Self-interests
Collective Self-Interest
Collective Interest
Geographic Features
Concentrated
local, community-based
Expended Parochialism
local or regional
Diffused
from local to universal
Motivation
Material Interests
Solidary
Emotional
Conditions for
Successful
Mobilization
Entrepreneurial Leader
Drastic Accident
Indirect Material Rewards
Emotional
Transaction Costs
Abstract Ideals
Identity
Transaction Costs
Civic Capacity
Organizations
3. NIMBY Protests
Between two poles of the spectrum there is a third type of environmental
movement, the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) protests.
In many basic respects this
kind of environmental movement resembles to victim protests, yet its geographical
features creates essential hurdles which requires much greater civic capacity to
6
overcome.
Like victim protests, NIMBY event is triggered by fundamental concern
of self-interests, ranging from the threats of monetary loss to risk on health or
deterioration in living conditions.
One major difference is that NIMBY is protesting
against something in a preventive manner.
Nevertheless, since individuals tend to
be more sensitive to the deprivation of what have owned than to the possible gain,
the protesters are very likely to have the reaction as a victim, no matter if the harms
have actually done to them or not. Sometimes by wild imagination rather than
actual suffering, the protests might be scared and become more aggressive.
Since NIMBY usually involves in an embarrassing situation in which relatively
fewer but interest-concentrated individuals will have to suffer in order to provide
public goods for widely diffused individuals, it inflicts a political structure of
imbalanced mobilization. On the one side, the government or the unpopular facility
imposer tend to have silent supporters.
Stakeholders on this side usually share only
marginally benefits and thus have very weak incentive to utter their supports.
The
disadvantageous position in mobilization usually leads to an incentive to take better
use of the advantage in information control.
Most information about the facility is
in the hands of the facility imposers and it is usually up to their own discretion about
the degree to share the information with the opponents. The withholding of
information would further trigger distrusts and misgiving on the opposition side.
Aforementioned natures of NIMBY event reinforce the implication of
geographical features and distinguish this kind of environmental movements from
victim protests.
First, the protests need to mobilize supporters from much greater
areas. In contrast to the victim protests in which the boundary is judged by the fact,
i.e. actual impacts of the facility, NIMBY protests draw boundary by imagination and
thus the distribution of supporters can be extended to much greater area. As a
7
matter of fact, the greater distribution of supporters is, the stronger the legitimacy
the protest has, and the greater influence on final decision would be.
Second, a greater geographical coverage means greater mobilization costs and
greater difficulty in sharing information and coordinating actions among participants.
As the scale goes beyond a grassroots community in which existing social networks
can play a role in generalizing leaders and in monitoring against free-riding behaviors,
the nature of the scenario swings to the other pole of the spectrum, resembling the
conservation campaigns that requires an organization to overcome the mobilization
hurdles. As mentioned earlier, such organized collective action is still a forbidden
zone to trespass by citizens in an authoritarian country like China. Therefore, if such
protests have actually happened, there must be a quantum leap in quality that is
worthy of exploration. To phrase in earlier theoretical context, there could be great
improvement in civic capacity.
Third, since the opponents of NIMBY protesters usually enjoy strong legitimacy
by citing public interests (e.g. economic growth, solving essential public problems), it
inevitably involves discourse between parochial interests and public interests.
To
gain greater legitimacy, the protestors tend to engage in a deliberation on the “real”
public interests or the policy alternatives of the original plan.
Broader issues, such
as fairness in distributing environmental bad (or the issue of environmental justice),
ideal developmental mode, due decision making process, or other social, economic,
and political issues could all be brought up.
In this respect, NIMBY protests carry
out the function of promoting “public” awareness and help improving the civic
capacity in the long run.
In short, the emergence of mass NIMBY protests indicates an critical qualitative
8
change in state-society relationship in an authoritarian country.
If only one incident
every happened, it might be an accidental consequence of several contingent factors.
If there are several cases are available to extract common elements from them, it is
more possible to point out how civic capacity has been improved to make such
environmental movements possible.
In the following sections, two cases, anti-PX
in Xiamen and anti-Maglev Train in Shanghai, will be introduced and analyzed for this
purpose.
Anti-Para-Xylene Protests in Xiamen City
1. Background
Because of its historical linkage and geographic propinquity, Xiamen has been
assigned to carry out the function of united front since early 1990s, while Haicang is
especially ideal for its good harbor, low land and labor costs, and hospitality of local
government in guarantee the supply in such infrastructure as electricity, water, and
transportation. After the fail try by the Formosa Plastics Group, Xianglu Group led
by Mr. Chen Yuo-hau took the chance by deploying a Polyester Plant there in 1995,
and proposed a further upstream PX plant on the same site to facilitate vertical
integration in its petrochemical kingdom. Once successful, the Group will rank 4th
high in China’s petrochemical industry,2 and the total investment amount would be
the highest in Xiamen’s history.
Xianglu sent in its PX Plant project of
10.8-billion-Yuan investment in early 2001, went through different levels of
governmental reviews in the following six years, and got the final approval by the
highest planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission in the
2
Other petrochemical giants includes the China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopech),
China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), and China Oil and Gas Group.
9
end of 2006. Once approved, there should be no obstacles to stop this project,
Xianglu turned its low-key attitude to holding a high-profile groundbreaking
ceremony.
Unexpected noises were uttered first from real estate market.
Commodity
housing market was surging in Xiamen with luxury villas and apartments
mushroomed in the suburbs, especially in northern Haicang where a newly
constructed bridge made this place perfect for white-collar young immigrants.
It
would definitely a major threat for this market if the pollution problems swelled
owing to new investment plans. Opposition was fermenting and developed rapidly
in town. But according to previous experiences, such noise from developers could
safely be ignored because the developers have depended too much on the
government who controlled so many critical elements of real estate business, such as
the land and all kinds of permits and licenses.
To the Group’s surprise, however, the
civil society, a sector that had never played any essential role in economic decisions,
was actually able to mobilize mass protests against this project.
2. Petitions
Open objection was initiated by a Chemical professor, Ms Zhao Yufen,3 of
Xiamen University. She enjoyed a prestigious status as an academician of Chinese
Academy of Sciences and a member of National Committee of Chinese People’s
Political Consultative Conference (zhengxie, hereafter the Consultative Conference).
She, together with five other Academicians, first sent a joint petition letter to the
3
Professor Zhao was raised and educated in Taiwan before she went to the United States for
graduate degrees. She is prestigious in biochemical sphere internationally. She became the member
of the Conference as early as 1988 not only because of her scholarly achievement but also her Taiwan
background. She left the position in 2008 probably because of her initiating the PX protest.
10
Party Secretary and the Mayor, arguing that the potential problems of leaking and
explosion of Para-Xylene would make this facility a time bomb for the
million-population city. Failing to get positive responses from either city or
provincial administrators, Professor Zhou initiated another round of efforts in March
of the following year.
March in every year is a politically sensitive moment because the Consultative
Conference, together with the National People’s Congress (hereafter the Congress),
will be held in Beijing so that any minor disputes might eventually be amplified to an
unexpected degree through the intensive reports mass media. Although everybody
knows that the Congress as the highest legislative organ is actually a rubber stamp,
and that the Consultative Conference have no effective institutional mechanism to
actually mediate diverse interests, these festival-like annual political shows have
forced different levels of governments to engage in public relationship management.
Most importantly, they have to prevent any thorny, irritating incidents from
happening to lose their face or even endanger their career.
Such a practical concern
creates political opportunities for the dissidents to threaten the officers effectively.
To make full use of this chance, Prof. Zhao invited another 104 members to sign
the petition against the PX project, Wang Yifu, the Second Deputy Governor of Fujian
Provincial Government in charge of education, science, culture, public health, and
Taiwan Affairs. This indicated an ambiguous attitude of the provincial leaders.
While there was no public defiance toward the project supported by the central
government, the provincial leaders showed their reservation by allowing one major
leader to express his personal objections on this matter. Since these celebrities
enjoyed official status and thus a certain degree of protection against harassment
11
from the public authorities, they were able to pass the message that the project was
neither absolutely safe nor unquestionably beneficial. Possible leak and explosion
of such poisonous materials as Benzene and toluene tended to result in immediate
casualty, while long-term exposure to petrochemical pollutants would lead to
endocrine disruption of the citizens. The claimed benefits of this investment
seemed to be overestimated.
The asserted 80-billions-Yuan annual GDP addition
was seriously exaggerated if calculated by the production capacity and the market
value of PX.4
While the job opportunity could have been an attractive appeal, the
vacancies associated with this investment were estimated only up to several
hundreds.
Some of these concerns were disclosed through mass media and liberal
magazines like Southern Weekend (Nanfang Zhomo) and Phoenix Weekly
(Fenghuang Zhokan). More discussions, however, prevailed on the internet. More
and more internet users posed messages on their Blogs or bulletin board systems.
The response of the local leaders, however, was somewhat disappointed. They
had no intention to change the policy. The Secretary of City’s Party Committee
(shiwei shuji ) He Lifeng, encouraged his subordinates to speed up the
implementation of the policy.
Nor the central officer would like to have a second
thought on this. A high-echelon officer in National Development and Reform
Committee confessed to the petitioners frankly that the central government had no
plan to chance its position. Some further administrative measures were deployed
to assure the implementation of the project.
Local presses that were mostly owned
or at least controlled by the party-state started to have advocacy campaigns for the
PX project. Magazines with negative news were brutally confiscated from the
4
The price of PX in world market reached a new high to RMB 1248.80 per ton 2007, a capacity of
800,000 tons per year will create about 1 billion total output value.
12
newspaper stands,5 while blogs spreading or discussing the PX project were blocked
outright.6
As more internet users urged a “Yellow-ribbon” parade against projects,
even harsher measures were undertaken to prevent possible protests from
happening.
3. Protests
The burst of a large-scale public protest is something that cannot be tolerated.
It would harm the legitimacy of the Communist regime and thus could be
detrimental to the political careers of local leaders.
Therefore the local authority
had done everything to prevent the street demonstration from happening.
In
addition to blocking the Internet and mobile phone messages advocating a
“collective casual walk” to the City Hall, local officers started to arrest and retain
famous dissidents with protest records. When the designate date approached, city
government even cancelled the holiday,7 asking students to go to schools and public
servants to offices. Local leaders even reconciled by announcing the suspension the
project for further review process on May 30.
To the city officers’ surprise, the movement was still successfully mobilized given
these harsh preventive measures. There were several thousand citizens parading
on the street peacefully on June 1st. Many of the protests had small yellow ribbon
on the thumb, while many had slogan board in hand. As more and more protesters
collected in front of the city hall and demanded a “termination” rather than
5
E.g., Fenghuan Zhoukan 256.
6
E.g., Xiaoyu Luntan (Little-fish forum).
7
st
nd
June 1 is is the Children’s Day, a holiday without school for primary school students and 2 and
3 were weekend.
13
rd
“suspension” of the project, participants knew that they were creating a record. In
the process the participants were highly self-constrained,8 avoided conflicts with the
police.
Later the assembly in front of the city hall, the crowd started to parade
toward Xiamen University in a spontaneous manner. In response, the police officers
were also self-controlled in that occasion, standing quietly behind the blocking tapes.
Once the crowd broke through the containment, the police were still remained calm
probably because insufficient force had been deployed.
The protests continued for
three consecutive days until the long-holiday was over.
4. Policy Turn
The street protests were reported by central media agents and shocked the
central leaders in Beijing. They responded positively and openly by having the
Chairman of National Development and Reform Committee, Ma Kai, announce that
the project was subject to further scrutiny via an Environmental Impact Assessment
of the whole urban region. Probably because of the pressure from above, and
partly because of possible demonstration again, the local authority did not take
massive revenging measures (e.g. investigation and arrest) against the participants
afterward. The incident turned to hibernation stage to in which the protesters
waited for the EIA result patiently.
If the street protests marked a new epoch in which civil protests could penetrate
the blockade of the authoritarian regime in China, then the intensive civil discourse
on this issue could be considered as another landmark achievement. Public zeal
revived after December 5th when the city government announced that the report of
8
For example, when they went through the hospitals, they would stop shouting slogans
automatically.
14
Regional Environmental Impact Assessment was upon finished and review process
demanded for the input of the public. Two sets of procedure were conducted.
First, the government offered a public opinion poll on the internet since the evening
of December 8th. Nevertheless the webpage was shut down in about 24 hours and
never open again probably because the public authority was shocked again by the
opposition forces.9
Secondly, the government was holding a public hearing to
collect concrete opinions regarding this project. To assure the credibility by
guaranteeing fair chance of attending the hearing, the city government went through
a lottery-drawing process. About one hundred participants were allowed to
participate in the hearings in two consecutive days (December 13 and 14), in which
the attendants overwhelmingly opposed the projects.10
The process itself was
highly praised by the participants and witness. In addition to being proud of the
citizenship that they themselves had performed, many protesters turned to
acknowledge the endeavor of the government in the latest phase of the event.
In the following days, the provincial leaders held a series of meeting for final
decision on this matter. Six days after the public hearings, the provincial
government formally announced that the project would be move to neighbor city,
Gulei Peninsula, while the costs incurred to the investor would be compensated by
the government. The protestors gained a complete victory. Until late 2008, the
project is still suffer from vehement protests in new location and thus has very
limited progress.
9
In about 24 hours the opposition camp collected about 55000 votes against the project.
contrast, the supporting votes were about 3000.
10
More than 90 percent participants expressed their objection against the project.
15
In
Anti-Maglev Train in Shanghai
1. Background
From the perspective of Chinese governments, the importance of having a
maglev line in commercial operation manifests in different aspects. First, from a
symbolic perspective, it serves to raise the pride of the nation, promote modern
image, and therefore enhance the legitimacy of communist regime. While several
other means have been serving the same purpose, such as breakthrough in nuclear
weapons or aerospace technologies, Maglev has its distinctive status in ranking China
another number one in the world. Since there had been no maglev train in service
when China approved this project, this high-tech transportation system shows how
China might be able to out-beat other advanced countries in this specific field of
technology.
The second rationale for the Maglev is its commercial value. Since the inter-city
rail system tended to be overloaded since late 1990s,11 the demand for great
capacity had been strong for Chinese governments.
Maglev train enjoys essential
advantages in high speed, high safety, low energy consumption, and low
environmental impact, and is considered a promising technology to serve
long-distance transportation for next generation. China as a late-comer in mass
transportation technology enjoys advantage of taking the most advanced system
without too much sunk cost. The huge domestic market in China also guarantees a
11
Specifically, the rail capacity connecting Beijing and Shanghai had been the main concern.
16
competitive economy of scale, e.g. a much lower average cost in obtaining or
developing germane technologies for commercial operation. For above reasons, the
Primer Zhu Rongji (ever been the Mayor of Shanghai City) and Mayor of Shanghai
City Xu Kuangdi showed their great interests in Maglev when they had chance of
test-ride in their official visit to Germany. They requested a loan and technology
transfer from German government and Maglev company (TRI) to promote this
system in China. A demonstration (experimental) line, running between Shanghai
Pudong Airport and Longyang Road Station,12 was soon planned, constructed, and
put into operation in the beginning of 2003.
With political and financial supports from the central leaders, the maglev project
connecting Shanghai and Hangzhou was officially approved by Commission of
Development and Reform in March 2006.13
The section within Shanghai city
encountered serious resistance because it had to go through heavily populated area
and thus triggered the concern of electromagnetic pollution as well as intensive
relocation of residents.
Falling to overcome the obstacles immediately, the city
government planned to extend the demonstration line from Longyang Road Station
to the center of World Expo, Shanghai South Railway Station (hereafter South
Station), and further to Hongqiao Airport to use the World Expo and a promotion
12
Longyang Road Station is a subway station on southeastern outskirt of Shanghai City. Since it is
not a hub for public transportation and thus not convenient for the passengers reach different corners
of the city. In addition, the fare is too high to be affordable for citizens. This line seems to serve
more touring than transporting purpose since its formal operation, with an overall ridership at only
about 20% of capacity. For this reason, opponents criticize that it is mere a very expensive toy for
the city.
13
The other proposal, connecting Shanghai and Beijing, was not approved because the authority
worried that too many train systems on the same rail line would be too complicated to operate.
17
force of this project.14
2. First Wave, Petitions with Scattered Protests
To avoid possible protests, the proclamation of relocation plans along the
designated line was made surreptitiously by different district governments in
different time. Very limited exposure time left the targeted communities no chance
to respond with preparedness. Most stakeholders were not aware of their engaged
interests in this early stage.
Consequently, there was no reaction from the citizens
until one resident accidently found the announcement and called for public attention
in the community. Since then, news spread quickly through internet.
The Internet became an important media to call for collective actions in
defending citizens’ rights. Higher income level of the citizens in Shanghai in general
and in these commercial housing communities in specific has sustained a huge
number of internet users who can access to internet on a daily basis. The
prosperity of real estate market has further created all kinds of internet forums and
blogs to serve commercial purposes on the one hand, and for customers to share
information about housing markets and experiences in fighting against the
construction companies on the other.
Once the news of maglev project was posed
on the internet, public concerns in the communities along the maglev line were
fermented right away.
For most of residents, since moving to other place is very
inconvenient and might not be an affordable alternative because of the crazy
14
It makes more sense to start from South Station where the original Shanghai-Hangzhou railway.
Probably because of the intention to secure the maglev project from the competition of the
high-speed-rail proposed by Ministry of Railways in roughly the same time, Shanghai City government
incorporated the project to the mega project of World Expo under the title of “public rapid
transportation system,” in which a maglev line serves to connect two airports and the expo venue. In
this way the City got funds to initiate Maglev project even though some disputes regarding this
projects still remained to hamper its progress.
18
appreciation of commercial house in Shanghai, they expressed serious concerns on
the width of buffer zone, hoping to reduce the possible health impacts of
electromagnetic waves.
As in the initiate stage of other right-defending incidents, concerned individuals
started with petitions within the administrative system. It is easy to understand
that any blunt move on the street tends to inflict terrible personal troubles, therefore
there usually were a process of escalation in confrontation: only when mild means
fail, the right defenders will then consider stronger means and greater dosage for
protests. Started from October 2006, petition activities scattered in individual
communities (Xiaoqu). Several activists started with visiting the branch office of the
Maglev Company in their district, but failed to get any useful information. They
further visited the district government, and were replied by empty official languages.
After these futile efforts, each community started to organize collective movement
respectively. They mobilized community members to “take a casual walk” (sanbu)
to the district governments on Monday morning in an excuse of having businesses
there. The participants were asked to remain gentle, and to avoid irritating the law
enforcers, and to comply with the requests of the policemen. They were expressing
their opinion collectively, firmly, and peacefully in public space and within legal
boundary.
In this way they successfully won reception from district leaders respectively and
more explanation from specialists who backed up the maglev policy. The petition
office also accepted their application and promised to send them upward for sincere
consideration. Very soon, however, the participants realized that district
governments had been a wrong target. Although leaders in these governments
19
were relatively nice and patient in communicating with the residents in stake, they
are mere enforcers of city governments and did not have sufficient jurisdiction to
make any meaningful compensation deals with the stakeholders. Soon after Spring
Festival of year 2007, some communities started collecting donations and arranging a
petition trip to the central government in Beijing, so called “shangfang”.
With some
aids from insider of the petition bureau, petition forms were sent in and hopefully
they can reach right persons with authority to solve the problems for them.
To many people’s surprise, the city government responded positively to their
petitions. In mid-June the city government claimed that an environmental impact
report was proposed for review by central government. It was a good signal for
protesters because environmental impact assessment had usually been a step-down
stone for a drastic policy turn. New policy was announced in form of an
improvement plan for Maglev Line in the end of 2007. Under the title of
“improvement” (youhua) this modification circumvented the protesting communities
under the excuse of straightening the line to save the costs. A scrutiny indicated
that that the improvement plan has been a convenient tool for the city government
to cope with the protests, hoping that the project could be deployed in time and be
finished before the opening ceremony of 2010 World Expo. Taking advantage of the
rush of worldwide tourists, the maglev company could not only have a wonderful
joint marketing campaign with World Expo, but also had a chance to offset the
financial deficit that had long criticized by the competitor.
3. Second Wave, Demonstration
To governmental officers’ surprise, a series of large-scale street protests were
triggered by the announcement of the improvement plan. The change in route
20
created new stakeholders along the new line. These stakeholders were educated
about the harmful effects of the maglev project through earlier protests, and feel
victimized when they realize the government sacrificed them for the sake of others.
Demonstration burst out without warm-up period like in the earlier stage.
In the
first weekend of 2008, protesters accumulated automatically and walked around
their communities. The following day, also a holiday, protests with even bigger
scale ensued, and the crowd marched to essential districts that had an impact on the
traffic. The police was in position and some protesters with white ribbon on
forehead were arrested for short retention.
The government responded by holding several meetings with the voluntary
delegations of the protesters, yet no satisfactory results were generated. Protesters
continued to take causal walks along the river bank in the following every evening,
intending to mobilize a greater one in the coming weekend. Although the
government seemed to get nervous and started to crackdown evening walk alone the
bank, the protests in the weekend was still very successful in having about one
thousand protesters marching on the People’s Avenue and gathering on the People’s
Square.
These protests successfully created great pressure on the government
mainly because of the potential scale of the participants that may embarrass the city
government in the annual democratic episode, the National People's Congress (NPC)
and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), will be staging
soon.
Consequently, the mayor clearly expressed that the project of maglev was still
under review by independent specialists and thus final decision was still pending.
The policy seemed to fade away when its substitutes, the traditional high-speed rail
21
connecting Shanghai and Hangzhou and the subway route 2 connecting two
international airports were in operation lately.
The major supporter of this project,
the party secretary Chen Liangyu stumbled by being accused of corruption.
Discussion and Conclusion
The emergence of mass NIMBY protests in two cities in about the same time
marked an epoch of China in its development of civic capacity. These protests
demonstrate that the civil society in China started to be able to overcome the
obstacles of mobilizing collective actions to challenge the determinant decisions of
the public authority.
While the satisfactory results might result from such factors as
favorable opportunity structure, successful organization of mass collective action
itself deserves careful analysis.
First, protestors in both cases benefit from new communication technologies.
Since mass media has been under tight control by the party-state, mobilization in
two cases relied on internet, mobile phone. Such communication means as Instant
Messenger networks (mainly QQ and MSN) under the technology infrastructure of
Web 2.0 had been widely applied so that any internet user can now easily hook up a
bunch of other users simultaneously, constantly, and cheaply. This made possible of
exchanging information promptly when some issues attract their attention.
Another similar amazing tool has been the text message of the cellular phone.
Because of lower infrastructure costs, cellular phone has replaced the wired phone
to become the major telecommunication tool in China. By the end of 2007, the
mobile phone penetration in China has surpassed 40 percent (600 millions
22
subscribers),
15
while in urban area the rate would be much higher than the average.
Since text message is much cheaper than voice phone call, users of mobile phone in
this country had been trained to be very skillful in thumb-keying and sending
messages to single as well as multiple receivers.
By such decentralized, person-to-person communication framework,
information can be spread widely without geographic limits.
Another important
advantage of such decentralized mobilization network is that it created difficulty for
the public authority to target and arrest the core organizers. Simply disseminating
such messages was hard to be considered as criminal behaviors, while the amount of
involved persons could be too big to manage.
In the case of Xiamen, the
government did arrest some of the webmasters who advocated street
demonstrations in their blogs or instant messaging networks,16 or tried to sensor
and bloc the message with the words of “yellow-Ribbon” or “PX”. Yet these
counteractions proved to be easy to overcome technologically.
Second, the protestors in both cities demonstrated their knowledge of the “rule
of law” and maneuvered their protests according to this principle. Protesters in both
cases have been white-collar, middle-class professionals who were not as radical as a
lot of reckless victim protesters. They always tried such legal means as petition
channels first. When they were forced to demonstrate on the street, they
camouflaged their actions within legal boundary, such as “casual walk” on the street
or “having-business” in public agencies. As more and more political leaders and
bureaucrats getting more familiar with the lawful rights of the citizens, they tended
15
See http://www.itu.int/newsroom/press_releases/2008/29.html, checked on Oct 4, 2008.
For example, Wu Xian, the webmaster of “Returning my Blue Sky and Green Water” instant
messaging network, was arbitrarily arrested and detained the night before street demonstration.
23
16
to treat a peaceful action in peaceful manner.
Third, protesters in both cases engaged in deliberation of broader some public
issues, rather than focusing merely on self-interests. In Xiamen case, public safety
and proper urban zoning issues were brought up for discussion. In Shanghai case,
in addition to public safety problem, the cost-benefit and alternatives of maglev lines
were scrutiny. Trying to understanding the professional debates and voluntarily
explaining the technological jargons to help the lay folks to overcome the hurdles of
communication on the web had created a bunch of public-spirited, respectful citizens
who can monitor the endeavors of the authority.
Above share features of both cases indicate a bright side of social development
in China.
The quality of protestors and their ability to mobilize collective actions to
press demands on the governments indicate a remarkable enhancement of civic
capacity through which civil society can hold the authoritarian state more
accountable.
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