Chine Infrastructure Industrie Economie
Mass protests force Chinese authorities to scrap industrial project
►http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jul2012/chin-j11.shtml
By John Chan
11 July 2012
The Chinese government last week promised to abandon the construction of a $1.6 billion industrial plant in Sichuan province’s Shifang city following mass protests.
Hongda Chemical, a subsidiary of the privately-owned Chinese resources conglomerate, Hongda Group, planned to refine copper ore from Tibet and Australia. The project consisted of a molybdenum processor with an annual capacity of 40,000 tonnes and a 400,000-tonnes-a-year copper cathode production line.
Like many industrial projects in China, the plant had been approved with little consideration for the wellbeing of the local population or the impact on the environment. Fears that the plant’s emissions would destroy limited local water supplies or cause cancers made it a focal point of anger against the government.