Moreover, on large environmental issues such as hydropower development,
proponents of development are likely to be closely allied to powerful
ministries and may have personal relationships with them.
We have also mentioned that environmental concerns are less sensitive than
issues such as labor protest and human rights, and for this reason journalists
report on the environment frequently. China’s large media groups provide
many channels to spread information: ‘2200 newspapers, 8135 magazines,
1210 broadcasting stations, 1000 TV stations, 2400 cable networks’.^70 Not all
report on environmental problems, but some, such as China Environmental
News, have been in business for nearly 20 years.
Most reports tend to be innocuous, as there are dangers to investigative
reporting and not just from censors. For instance, Lu Meng, a reporter for
West Times, investigated illegal logging at a state forest farm in Sichuan
Province, and published a highly critical article on it. When conducting a
follow-up study, the farm’s guards seized his press card, mobile phone and
camera, and beat him, as well as his driver and the whistleblower who had
alerted him to the illegal practices. Apparently, farm security personnel did not
intervene.^71
A late 2005 episode of violent environmental protest shows the continuing
restrictions on media reportage. On 6 December, some 300 residents of the
south China village of Dongzhou, armed with spears, knives and dynamite,
protested a power company’s plans to develop a power plant on their land,
without agreed upon compensation. In addition to forcible seizure of land, the
economic development project would install a coal-fired generator, which
would heavily pollute the village. Plans to fill in a local bay as part of the
project would ruin a fishery used by villagers for generations; blasting a
nearby mountainside for rubble to use in the landfill and fill in the bay would
threaten biodiversity.
When complaints to authorities and a sit-down protest failed to gain the
support of county and provincial (Guangdong) authorities, villagers assembled
in the town center, confronted by hundreds of police. Without warning, police
violently suppressed the demonstration, in the largest use of armed force
against civillians since the Tiananmen protests of 1989. The police left 20
protestors dead in automatic weapons fire and at least 40 missing. The regime
imposed a blackout on all news about this episode of environmental protest.
The New China News Agency reported a skeletal version of the event only
four days later.
Thus, although journalists are developing relationships with NGOs in
China, most screen their critical faculties and look for lurking shadows of the
state and society. The opening example of this volume demonstrates that
censorship of critical environmental reports, and of inflammatory environ-
mental protests and demonstrations, continues.
182 Governance of biodiversity conservation in China and Taiwan