The Environment and Climate Change

An unidentified assailant assaulted Three Gorges resettlement activist Fu Xiancai after he met with a public security official on June 8, according to a June 12 Human Rights in China (HRIC) press release, a June 13 HRIC press release, and a June 14 Associated Press (AP) article that appeared in the Guardian of London. Fu met with the official to discuss an interview that Fu gave in May to a German television station. According to HRIC sources, the official warned Fu at the meeting that his "oppositionist" interview "would not have good consequences." Fu is paralyzed from the shoulders down as a result of the assault and is currently under 24-hour police surveillance at the No. 1 People's Hospital in Yichang city, Hubei province.

Zhou Shengxian, the Minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), said in a May 4 Beijing News interview (in Chinese) that mass protests over pollution have risen by 29 percent per year in recent years. Zhou said that more than 51,000 disputes over environmental pollution occurred in 2005.

The Chinese government's Three Gorges Project has led to the forced eviction of residents in Shengquan village, Chongqing municipality, according to a December 2 report by Radio Free Asia. Construction on the massive hydroelectric dam project began in 1993 and should be completed by 2009. Local government officials issued eviction orders on December 1, giving villagers seven days to complete procedures for temporary relocation. Villagers complained that government agents began shutting off their water supply and blocking streets as early as November 30, to force them to relocate. In addition, villagers allege that the compensation and resettlement terms offered to them are unreasonable, and that the government offers higher amounts to those with an urban household registration ("hukou") than those with a rural hukou.

The State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) ordered an environmental impact assessment (EIA) center at Beijing University to stop performing assessments in late October and to reform its operations within three months, according to an October 24 press release on the SEPA Web site and an October 27 China Daily article. SEPA made the announcement after an investigation revealed that the Beijing University EIA center misreported information or failed to include relevant information in EIA documents for three projects. The Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau had found that the EIA center failed to uphold EIA standards, and reported the case to SEPA for investigation, according to the China Daily article.

The State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) halted four construction projects during October in Liaoning and Guangdong provinces, and in Tianjin municipality, for violating environmental protection laws, according to an October 25 Xinhua article and an October 26 Beijing News article. The four construction sites either began operations or tested production lines before obtaining project completion inspections from the local environmental protection departments.