Dirty China

With the spread of pollution-related unrest, a contagious source of instability in the world's most populous country, Huashui stands out as a benchmark more than a year after farmers drew a line in the once-fertile earth.

Not only was it one of the largest known protests, with an estimated 10,000 police officers and desperate villagers battling in April 2005, but it also proved a rare case in which citizen outrage prevailed over deeply vested interests. A few months ago, the last of the area's 13 poison-spewing factories was shuttered...

"Environmental problems are increasingly a flash point of rising unrest in China," said Nicholas Bequelin, China researcher with Human Rights Watch. "You're not talking about the size of some woodland or whether to cut old-growth trees. You're talking about life-and-death issues for villagers."

In Huashui, villagers may have forced out the factories, but they have paid a price. Nearly a dozen farmers, including [Wang Liangping, the 40-year-old brother of Wang Xiaofang, a 43-year-old farmer], have been sent to prison for as long as five years. Several say they have been tortured...

China saw 50,000 environment-related riots, protests and disputes last year, an increase of nearly 30%, according to the state-run China Daily. Many were closely linked to other divisive and equally sensitive social issues, including the nation's growing wealth gap and illegal land seizures by local officials as new developments gobble up the countryside...

Analysts blame a top-down single-party system obsessed with economic growth in which officials are promoted for fulfilling five-year plans, not for listening to citizens.

Structural problems also are a factor. Pan's environmental bureau is weak and easily dominated by muscular economic ministries with bigger budgets and more clout. And the salaries of its local representatives are paid by the pro-growth governments they're supposed to be regulating.

"Many in government worry about instability if economic growth is not very fast," said Daniel C. Esty, head of Yale's Center for Environmental Law and Policy. "But I think instability is a far greater threat from people who find they're being poisoned by the environment."