Protests in China are nothing new. By some accounts, Chinese officials currently negotiate upwards of 50,000 "major incidents" annually. Widespread corruption has bred deep discontent: workers protest the Enron-like bilking of their life savings, townspeople fight against illegal land seizures, and villagers battle injustices -- small and large -- on a daily basis.
Typically, these protests are local in nature and generally resolved with a combination of payoffs, arrests, and promises of future improvement. Occasionally, China's government takes action against local officials whose crimes are considered egregious. As long as protests remain local, however, they can be managed as isolated cases that won't pose a broader challenge or spark a movement toward systemic change.
Yet the government's days of putting out protests like brush fires may be ending. Over the past year and a half, China's environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have organized protests that reach across provincial boundaries, engage Chinese from all social strata, garner support from China's media, and directly address the issue of failed governance on a national scale.
The catalyst for these broad-based protests is the proposed construction of hundreds of dams throughout western China. Dam construction in China has never been open to public debate. China's environmental activists, meanwhile, have focused on the "politically safe" issues of protecting biodiversity, recycling, and environmental education.
Now, however, these activists have become more assertive, launching campaigns against a number of proposed dams along the Nu and Jinsha rivers in Yunnan and the Min River in Sichuan. They still raise traditional issues of biodiversity loss, destruction of sites of natural beauty and cultural importance, and social justice issues surrounding resettlement.
But now they also challenge the shoddy governance and corruption that allow dam construction to proceed unchecked, without environmental impact assessments, as local officials siphon off resettlement funds and ignore the claims of local villagers.
The political stakes are high, and China's hydropower interests are strong. Environmental activists who are currently battling to halt damming and flooding in the culturally and scenically renowned region of the Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan are battling hydropower kingpin Li Xiaopeng (
Dam protests can often be volatile. In October, tens of thousands of villagers protesting inadequate resettlement compensation held a local official captive for several hours before 10,000 People's Armed Police officers rescued him.
These protests are striking not only for the sensitive nature of the issues they address, but for the broad-based support they have elicited. While spearheaded by Beijing-based NGOs, the dam protests involve Chinese from all parts of the country, employ all means of communication, and engage the support of central government officials.
Beijing-based NGOs are allying with local Sichuan NGOs to launch Internet campaigns, distribute petitions, and mobilize villagers.
In one case, environmental activists took villagers from a proposed dam site to another town to see firsthand how poorly others had fared in the dam resettlement process.
University students in the regions of the proposed dams have also become engaged through Internet chat groups. Environmental activists have found allies among officials within the State Environ-mental Protection Administration, Meteo-rological Administration and Forestry Bureau.
The dam projects have also become a focal point for a broader political debate within the Chinese media. Newspapers such as Southern Weekend, China Youth Daily and even the traditionally conservative China Daily call directly for greater political openness, increased political participation, and for strength-ening the rule of law.
Similar environmental protests have evolved into demands for broader political change in other countries.
In the former Soviet Union and its satellite states, environmental activism contributed dramatically to regime change. In countries like Thailand, Indo-nesia, and the Philippines, environmental protest has helped spur political reform.
The same may happen in China. Many of China's leading environmentalists are former students and intellectual leaders from the Tiananmen protests of 1989 who believe that environmental activism offers an avenue for advancing broader political reform. Others began apoliti-cally, but have come to believe that there can be no environmental protection without political change.
This shared commitment to systemic reform is putting China's government to the test.
China's leaders recognize that their policy options are limited: business as usual, repression, or reform. Thus far, the government has demonstrated some flexibility while trying to manage this new challenge with traditional means.
Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) has stayed the construction of a number of dams until environmental and social impact assessments could be undertaken. Some have been approved while others have not. With hundreds of dams still likely to become targets for protest, pressure will only intensify for a more significant response.
The government could launch a broad crackdown on such protests, although this would risk damaging China's prestige internationally and provoking larger, more violent protests.
The third option is to use environmental protection to justify moving China ahead with real political reform sooner rather than later. While this is currently an unlikely outcome, as the anti-dam protests gather strength, China's leaders may realize that if they do not move quickly, they risk being swept away.
Elizabeth Economy is a senior fellow and director of Asia Studies at the US Council on Foreign Relations and author of The River Runs Black, an examination of the environmental challenges to China's future.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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