“Tibet is still a very sensitive topic, even if your story is about the environment and not politics,” said an editor, who prefers to remain unnamed, of the environmental section of Southern Weekly, a paper the New York Times has called the most influential liberal newspaper in China. In early April, several satellite images were [...]
Until recently, Chen Tao (@陈涛哥在成都) worked at Alibaba, a Chinese Internet company, as an in-house censor deleting inappropriate postings. Now, he drives six hours every weekend from his home in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, up into the mountains to the north of the city to purchase wild mushrooms, free range eggs and organic honey. Chen [...]
The move is bold, inspired, and desperate. According to photos posted by a local journalist named He Guangwei (@何光伟) on Sina Weibo, China’s main micro-blogging platform, peasants from Gouli village in Henan Province hoisted a banner at the gate of the provincial-level environmental protection agency (EPA) that invited the officials to ”have a taste of the [...]
So a 500 reading of particulate pollution was considered “crazy bad” and “beyond index”? Try 993. That is a reading recorded at a monitoring station in central Beijing on the evening of January 12, according to the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center. @老头子陳先森 tweets on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, “I am so glad that my ex-girlfriend lives [...]
This article also appears in The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. In March of 2008, the New York Times announced that marathoner Haile Gebrselassie would skip his signature event in the Beijing Olympics. After the news leaked, the world-record holder told reporters bluntly, “The pollution in China is a threat to my health.” The [...]
Another month, another NIMBY protest in China. Following the similar protests in Shifang and Qidong earlier this year, people in the coastal city of Ningbo have taken to the streets to urge the local authorities to call off a controversial project that may impact the environment. Protesters object to the proposed capacity expansion by Zhenhai Refining & Chemical Company, which [...]
Netizens in China, already known for crowdsourced social activism, are hoping to make change happen again–this time, in order to save migratory birds. As reported by Headline News Hunan (@湖南头条新闻) and Changsha Evening News (@长沙晚报), there has been rampant poaching of wild birds on migratory paths in certain remote areas of Hunan Province by local peasants. (See [...]
Follow the spread of China’s development and you’ll find a shadow in its wake: Cancer villages. These are the places where the price for China’s dizzying pace of development is highest, where cancer rates have skyrocketed in the last two decades and almost no family is without a victim. Officially and unofficially, the Chinese media [...]
An infographic circulating on Chinese social media provides some background information on the planned oceanic wastewater pipeline and a compelling call-to-action for local residents in Qidong, a small city north of Shanghai. Fierce mass protest forced local government to abandon the project on July 28, the second successful mass NIMBY protest in China in a [...]
As China’s youth surged forward to protest the plan to build a molybdenum copper plant in Shifang, Sichuan Province, famous Chinese blogger and youth leader Han Han has weighed in. Although Han has previously expressed public doubts both about online protesters and the future of China, Han struck a more optimistic tone in a July 4 [...]
As China’s youth surged forward to protest the plan to build a molybdenum copper plant in Shifang, Sichuan Province, famous Chinese blogger and youth leader Han Han has weighed in. Although Han has previously expressed public doubts both about online protesters and the future of China, Han struck a more optimistic tone in a July 4 [...]
[Warning: Some images below are graphic.] A NIMBY protest in the small city of Shifang in Sichuan Province against a planned molybdenum copper plant turned bloody when the government mobilized riot police to confront protesters. Photos taken at the scene of the protest were posted on various Chinese social media sites, including Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter. These [...]
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