The Ottawa Citizen
February 26, 2002

For once, activists and the Party seem to have the same goal: to tackle China’s appalling environmental record. But can they get along enough to do some good?

(excerpt)

Is China going green? The idea seems laughable, coming after an 80-kilometre-long slick of benzene on the Songhua River poisoned the water supply for about 12 million people in northeastern China last fall.

But a growing number of observers say a green revolution is sweeping the country, with grassroots groups dragging polluters to court, consumers opting for organic produce, and activists staging defiant, even violent, protests.

In April, hundreds of villagers battled riot police outside Dongyang in Zhejiang province, demanding that officials close nearby chemical plants that had poisoned their water and crops. The factories were closed indefinitely.

Three months later, as many as 15,000 protesters faced off against riot police in the city of Xinchang in a successful bid to shut down a polluting pharmaceutical plant, according to the New York Times.

“People are taking a stand,” says internationally renowned Chinese dissident and environmentalist Dai Qing, who was jailed after the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, and who led the charge against the mammoth Three Gorges Dam hydroelectric project upon her release.