Yesterday, popular demonstrations racked Shifang, a city in the Sichuan province, leading to bloody clashes with police decked out in riot gear and some bricks hurled at local government offices. The maelstrom succeeded in halting the construction of a massive copper plant, a project being rammed through in the manner typical in provincial towns and cities—no public comments, no details about the environmental impacts, no information, nada.Thousands of Shifang residents, sick of that shit, rose up. It looked like this:And like this:The government was pissed and threatened the protestors with retaliatory action. Here’s the statement from Shifang’s police department, via the AFP:“’Anyone who has incited, planned or organised illegal gatherings, protest marches or demonstrations or those who have engaged in smashing and looting… will be punished severely.”And then, my favorite part: “Anyone using the Internet, mobile text messages and other methods to incite, plan or organise illegal gatherings, protest marches or demonstrations must immediately stop their illegal activities.”These guys are in trouble:
And there will likely be more of this:
Some 13 civilians and “many police” were badly hurt according to official numbers, but who the hell knows. Again, the lack of information is so routine, it’s tempting to assume it’s worse.Environmental protests in China present something of a strange dichotomy to us curious westerners—most of us have no idea they’re occurring at all, but to those who do, those who follow along on the devices made of the stuff they’re fought over, it’s another beast altogether: simultaneously old hat and impenetrable. We know these protests boil up, we root for the demonstrators and condemn the draconian responses from authorities. We know the dance steps, and we do them, increasingly warily.Here’s what we don’t do: Change our consumer habits. Call for government pressure and ask corporations to keep their supply chains as transparent as possible. Anything useful at all. Even though the ‘China makes our cheap shit’ truism has become so cliche, has permeated our cultural consciousness so thoroughly, we still either a) fail to recognize that that cheap shit is so cheap that it ruins millions of people’s lives or b) watch on in a state of semi-intrigued, voyeuristic web-soaked stasis. We need to be thinking harder about how to refresh.
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