BEIJING — In the cat-and-mouse game that characterizes political protest in China, the mice won a round this week. They did it by finding a new way to use a familiar technology.
Opponents of a chemical plant being built in the coastal city of Xiamen used cellphone text messaging to distribute widely their warning of dire consequences if the factory opened.
"Once this extremely poisonous chemical is produced, it means an atomic bomb will have been placed in Xiamen," the text message said in Chinese. "The people of Xiamen will have to live with leukemia and deformed babies. We want our lives and health!"
Spreading like a virus, the message was repeated more than 1 million times, environmentalists said, until it had reached practically everyone in Xiamen, a city of 1.5 million people in southeastern China known for its clean air and scenic views. It also spread beyond cellphones, splashed on walls in the form of graffiti and posted on blogs and other websites throughout China.
On Wednesday, in a move that caught almost everyone by surprise, municipal authorities announced that they were suspending construction of the plant.
It remains unclear whether China's growing environmental movement will ultimately win the fight to stop the toxic chemical p-Xylene from being produced in Xiamen. Local authorities initially insisted that the halt in construction was merely temporary. Then, on Thursday, Vice Mayor Ding Guoyan was quoted in the official China Daily newspaper as saying, "The city government has listened to the opinions expressed and has decided, after careful consideration, that the project must be re-evaluated."
P-Xylene is a petrochemical used in making films and fabrics. It is considered highly toxic, and has been linked to birth defects in animals. The $1.4-billion factory was being built by Tenglong Aromatic PX Co. 16 miles from the city center, next to a neighborhood of 100,000 people, according to the official New China News Agency.
No one has specifically said that plans for the factory have been scrapped. Local authorities did not immediately respond to questions faxed to them by The Times.
Whatever ultimately happens, the cellphone campaign clearly had an impact, and participants and outside observers hailed it as a powerful form of protest -- the latest in a series of innovations, from facsimile to e-mail to blog to text message, that dissenters have used to try to stay ahead of the government.
