Guangdong villagers besiege government building in water protest

Worsening water shortages raise tensions in China’s richest province

chinaworker.info

More than 300 residents of three villages in the Guangdong's Hengshishui town staged a demonstration in front of the township government headquarters demanding the release of five people detained on Saturday after a clash with police over a water diversion project. At least six people were injured and two police vehicles damaged, according to the Yingde city government, which has jurisdiction over the town.

According to the city government, some of the protesters barged into the government headquarters and started fighting with police officers and other officials. This report says the protesters smashed windows and other office facilities with bamboo rods, benches and ashtrays.

City officials blamed "troublemakers" for the violence, while the villagers had a different version of events: "It went out of control when the people became angry over the officials' bad attitude," one protester told Hong Kong's South China Morning Post. China Daily quoted Chen Tianxiang, a professor at the management school of politics and public affairs under Guangzhou-based Sun Yatsen University, who said the clash was the result of "a communication gap" between the local officialdom and the villagers. "Government departments should fully consider and protect villagers' interests and offer them channels to voice their concerns," Chen said.

The background to the conflict is a worsening water shortage in the province as a result of drought and widespread pollution. Many Guangdong cities, including Meizhou, Shaoguan, Shantou, Chaozhou and Qingyuan, have reported serious water shortages in recent years. Last year's rainfall was 13 percent lower than average and the problems are most acute in the north of the province. The South China Morning Post reports that, "Each summer, the Beijiang, one of the three tributaries of the Pearl River near Yingde, dries up. Working and sightseeing boats have disappeared from the usually busy river, as navigation has become too difficult. The other two tributaries, the Xijiang and Dongjiang, are also drying up."

As in other parts of China, a combination of climate change and severe industrial pollution are taking a toll. This was clearly an important factor in the weekend conflict at Hengshishui. The protesters from the villages of Hengling, Xibei and Hengshi, are campaigning against plans to transfer Hengshishui's water to neighbouring Qiaotou town, where the river has been heavily polluted by smelting factories upstream in the city of Shaoguan.

"Our villages have been in drought for years and the situation gets worse year by year. The villagers feel that water should not be shared if their own farmland and livestock are already dying of thirst,"the same villager told the South China Morning Post.

In 2005, local governments had to stop drawing water from the Beijiang when the level of cadmium, a heavy metal that is linked to cancer and other illnesses, shot up to 10 times the acceptable limit. The source of the cadmium poisoning is a smelting factory in Shaoguan. Media reports say that people suffered stomach pains and vomited after drinking water from the Beijiang. The water crisis in Guangdong, which also supplies most of Hong Kong's water, threatens to become acute. In 2007, the president of the Guangzhou Institute of Geography, Zhang Hong'ou, warned that "by 2020, the shortfall will widen to about half of the province's water demand, or more than 3.1 billion cubic meters, if no measures are taken to address the problem." (China Daily, 28 November, 2007)
 
China has seen a rising curve of environmental and pollution-related mass protests in recent years. Also Guangdong province has seen several so-called "mass incidents" related to the building of high-polluting industries or incinerators near residential areas. Last year, the provincial government ordered the relocation of the largest planned oil refinery from Nansha in Guangzhou following protests. Unusually, this project was moved despite already gaining approval by the central government.