Taking A Stand On PX

Local authorities in Kunming, Yunnan Province, Wednesday denied rumors that they had banned sales of white T-shirts in an effort to prevent them from being used in protests against an oil refinery and paraxylene (PX) project.

For a "rumor" the crackdown seemed all too real to local factory owner Zhang Ping, 40, whose factory has been the subject of an investigation over the last week because it produced white T-shirts emblazoned with "I love health," which authorities suspected were to be used in a protest.

"Banning white T-shirts alone may have been a rumor, but words like 'PX,' 'clean air' and 'health' are certainly sensitive," Zhang said.

Although the local publicity department's statement also said the government would scrap policies requiring people to provide their real names when requesting bulk printing jobs at photocopy shops, it still emphasized that printed products that could have negative effects on social stability should be regulated.

Xiao Bian, a local resident who claimed to be a citizen representative of the first protest on May 4, when 3,000 residents took to the street, told the Global Times that the government was overreacting.

"With the government announcing that the project will benefit the city's economy and promising they're going to control pollution, we're not against the project itself, but we hope the government will publicly disclose the environmental impact assessment (EIA) report and honestly discuss the location of the site with residents, to prove that they are reliable and will respect residents' opinions," he said.

Ma Xiaojia, director of the provincial energy administration, said the report was "confidential."

"The project is related to the energy safety and contains many safety secrets that could not be published," said Zhou Dekun, a local Party secretary in Caopu township, Anning, a city under Kunming's administration, where the oil refinery project will be located.

Zhou told the Global Times that he had received many calls asking when the government would release the report and he had told them that it would be around July.

Dong Zhengwei, a lawyer based in Beijing, told the Global Times that both environmental protection law and the Constitution stipulate that residents should be able to access information that is related to their daily lives, however there are no regulations specifying conditions permitting an EIA to be made confidential.

"If the first protest on May 4 was irrationally triggered by a lack of knowledge of oil refineries and PX," Xiao said, "The second was caused more by the government's secretive attitude."

 (globaltimes.cn , edited by Topco)