Chemical plant rally illegal, govt says

Hundreds walk streets in early hours, worried about harm to environment

A rally against the construction of a petrochemical plant in Maoming, an important production base in Guangdong province, was illegal, the local government said on Monday.

Crowds of residents have taken to the streets since Sunday in protest of a proposed 3.5 billion yuan ($569 million) paraxylene project that would add to the city's existing petrochemical operations jointly run by the local government and State-owned oil giant Sinopec. Residents fear it will harm the environment.

According to a statement by the government, the action was illegal, violating the Law on Assemblies, Processions and Demonstrations, as it was not previously applied for with the government or approved.

The local government said that a small group of demonstrators destroyed some public facilities by throwing rocks and bottles at about 10:30 pm on Sunday.

Photos uploaded on some major Chinese Internet portals show that hundreds of residents gathered in front of the government building on Sunday in the early morning and walked through the city, holding banners in protest of the proposed plant.

No casualties had been reported as of Monday, according to the government. Calls to the local publicity department went unanswered on Monday.

The protest followed the suspension of paraxylene projects in Xiamen, Fujian province, Dalian, Liaoning province and Kunming, Yunnan province, since 2007 after residents took to the streets in protest.

Construction adding to paraxylene production capacity "has proved difficult in recent years due to improved public awareness of environmental protection and inefficient communication informing the public of proposed plants", said Feng Shengping, a researcher with the Guangdong Provincial Situation Research Center.

Information on paraxylene, or PX, a major raw material for making polyester products, should be better communicated to the public, Feng said.

Most residents believe that the facilities would be a threat to the local environment as they know little about the chemical, Feng said.

Zhang Kehua, vice-chairman of Sinopec Engineering (Group) Co, agreed that more should be done to inform the public of the environmental effects of PX as China needs more domestic production of the chemical in the years ahead.

China, which accounts for about a quarter of the global PX production capacity, is expected to see an increasing shortage in 2014, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Citing an industrial report, released in January by the Sinopec's economics and technology research institute, Xinhua reported that the supply gap will be up to 9.5 million metric tons this year.

The domestic PX industry met only 47 percent of the country's demand in 2013, which increased by 18.5 percent from a year before.

"The local government needs to improve transparency in the construction of such chemical plants. Otherwise, the country will see a widening shortage of its PX supply if more projects are shut down," Zhang said.