for automotive components. The plant was designed to have an annual output
of 100000 tons of TDI, 90 percent of which would be exported to Asian
markets.^42
Taiwan’s economic authorities saw Bayer’s project as a major boost to
Taiwan’s bid to become an Asia-Pacific business hub. However, residents of
Taichung were adamantly opposed to the project, staging protests and citing
potential pollution as well as industrial safety problems. Newly elected
Taichung county head Liao Yung-lai was of the DPP, which controlled 12 out
of 23 of Taiwan’s local governments after its landslide victory in Taiwan’s
local elections of November 1997. He insisted that a referendum be held to
decide the fate of the Bayer project.
Using referenda to block environmentally polluting enterprises is a different
form of horizontal diffusion from western nations. DPP legislators pursued an
amendment to the Self-governance Law for Provinces and Counties of 1994,
which would allow local governments to hold referenda on public issues.
Critics of the legislation described it as anti-business, and both the European
Council of Commerce and Trade and the American Chamber of Commerce
urged support for the Bayer project.
American Chamber President Jeffrey Williams argued that, ‘the use of
public referenda as part of the approval process for private investment
projects’ was ‘unprecedented’ and ‘inconsistent with the concepts of trans-
parency and regulatory procedures which are essential to maintaining a vital
and attractive investment climate’.^43
The Taichung County Government delayed issuing permits while a local
referendum, scheduled for June 1998, was pending. After a long struggle
through a combination of the ballot box and protests, the citizens of Taichung
County were successful in their attempts to stop construction of the TDI plant.
Thereupon Bayer officially withdrew this project and built the plant in Texas.
Shell in China
Royal Dutch/Shell is a global energy giant, which has traded and invested in
China for more than 100 years. Since China’s opening in the late 1970s, Shell
has invested about US$2 billion, a larger amount than other international
energy companies. Shell has 18 wholly owned or joint venture companies in
China and employs about 1600 staff. All its core businesses are represented in
China: exploration and production, gas and power, oil products, chemicals,
and renewable energy.^44
In early 2001, PetroChina (China’s onshore oil/gas SOE) invited Shell to
tender an offer for participation in the West-East Gas Pipeline Project.^45 This
US$8.5 billion project, the second-largest infrastructure project in China’s
history, was designed to move compressed gas from the Tarim Basin to
146 Governance of biodiversity conservation in China and Taiwan