You can almost picture the central government official from the propaganda bureau or wherever penning this editorial before sending it over to GT. It sure does seem like Beijing is making an example out of Shifang's local leaders, with this message to everyone else: buck up or fuck off. Quoth GT: Only erroneous site selections, unqualified environmental protection indexes, and insufficient communication bet ...

Wow. So protests in China work? At 5:58 pm today, the official Weibo page of the Shifang, Sichuan municipal government posted a message stating that plans for a proposed molybdenum copper plant, which caused protests that began Saturday and escalated yesterday, have been permanently shelved. Perhaps local leaders read the writing on the wall when the term "Shifang" remained unblocked on Sina Weibo and Baidu ...

From where we sit and judging by the videos we've seen, the situation in Shifang, Sichuan yesterday looked a lot like a riot that was trying to happen but never materialized. In the above, people stand around while tear gas goes off around them. In the second video, which appears after the jump (along with the Youku version of the above), the title tells us that it was the appearance of riot police that set ...

The only info I have about this picture is the watermark and the caption, from Weibo user zhouwenneng, which reads, "In how many years will this picture win a big prize?" We'll update you again tomorrow in the a.m. For now, see our earlier post: Riot Police And Protestors Clash In Shifang, Sichuan Province (residents protesting a construction that would potentially damage their immediate environment). ...

In Shifang, Sichuan province, hundreds, possibly thousands of people have taken to the street to protest a molybdenum cooper project (run by HTC?) that people fear will be harmful to their environment and health. Netizens on Weibo are currently discussing the incident as it relates to riot police skirmishing with residents and setting off tear gas in the middle of a huge crowd, which they say was unnecessar ...