Keep the fires burning
Waste incinerators rile the public, but are much better than landfill
ONE Saturday last May, thousands of people near the affluent lakeside city of Hangzhou clashed violently with police during a protest over a planned waste incinerator. The demonstrators feared it would pollute the air in their bucolic district outside the city centre. They burned patrol cars and caused enough mayhem to force the government to delay construction. A few days ago, work on the facility quietly began. Police, both in uniform and plainclothes, were posted on the road into town to discourage troublemakers.
This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline "Keep the fires burning"
From the April 23rd 2015 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionMore from China
The dark side of growing old
A coming wave of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia will test China to its limits
Examining the fluff that frustrates northern China
An effort to improve the environment has had unintended consequences
China is talking to Taiwan’s next leader, just not directly
Officials in Beijing want the island’s new president to be more like one from the past