China’s leaders lend a listening ear on garbage, not politics

BEIJING — To help sell the public on the need for one of the world’s largest trash incinerators in the mountains in west Beijing, Communist Party officials bussed in hundreds of people for special tours. They held talks with residents and handed out questionnaires.

State-owned steel producer Shougang Group said they only started building the Lujiashan incinerator, which opened in November, after a survey showed 92 per cent of respondents were in favour, a result that some residents suspect was manipulated by the authorities.

Still, the attempts to curry public support are not exactly what one might expect in Communist China, where the authorities have in the past simply built key pieces of infrastructure wherever they wanted. Conveying a greater willingness to listen on some issues, such as the environment, appears to be an attempt to keep public unhappiness in check and maintain the party’s grip on power even as it continues to squash political dissent and censor the media.

Coping with growing amounts of trash, for instance, is a huge challenge. Beijing had set a target of building nine incinerators by this year. But the Lujiashan plant is only the fourth completed, partly because of what city officials attribute to “Not In My Backyard” sentiment among the generally more educated residents of the capital.

Such sensitivity to public opinion has been seen in other parts of the country, particularly in wealthier cities, where a burgeoning middle class is demanding a better quality of life.

In September, the Communist Party branch in Guangdong province’s Boluo county promised not to decide on the location of a planned waste incinerator without public approval after thousands of residents held demonstrations over two weekends, sometimes clashing with the police.

Critics argue that the restraint is for appearances only and that the authorities simply carry on with plans once the protests fade. But experts see a political motive.

“If they (the government) are seen as totally insensitive even to economic and environmental demands, then more people will be holding demonstrations and so forth and this will exacerbate the problem of instability,” said Mr Willy Lam, a political analyst at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The mandate appears to be coming from the very top. After a meeting of the Communist Party’s Central Committee in late 2013, Xinhua news agency published a list of 10 things showing government responsiveness. They included allowing couples to have more than one child, reforming the residence registration system to permit more farmers to become city residents and scaling back the number of university entrance exams.

Plant managers say they are still trying to win over residents by inviting them on tours to the incinerator where they can see large metal claws lifting week-old fermented waste from the bottom of a 25m-high container.

Mr Zhang Futian, the party secretary responsible for the incinerator, said plant managers provide reports on its air emissions and water recycling system to deal with residents’ “misunderstandings”.

Residents said they opposed the incinerator. “I climb the nearby mountains every morning and I can always see a large cloud of smoke coming out of the chimney,” said a resident, who would only give his surname as Song. “As for 92 per cent of residents approving it, that’s just impossible and the entire process was manipulated.” AP