《The Economist》《经济学人》中文版

[2007.06.21]Protest in China: Mobilized by mobile

Protest in China 中国的抗议活动
Mobilised by mobile 用移动设备移动人员

Jun 21st 2007 | BEIJING AND XIAMEN
From The Economist print edition
翻译：若诺



Organised by text messages and internet chats, China's middle classes are daring to protest, and giving the government a fright
中国中产阶级利用手机短消息和互联网聊天室进行抗议，造成政府忧虑

INFORMATION technology in China is once again making political waves. In the tropical seaport of Xiamen citizens still talk excitedly about how an anonymous text message on their mobile phones last month prompted them to join one of the biggest middle-class protests of recent years. And in Beijing politicians are scrambling to calm an uproar fuelled by an online petition against slave labour in brick kilns.

信息技术再一次引发中国的政治风波。 在厦门的热带海港，当地的居民仍然在激动谈论上个月出现在他们移动电话上的一条匿名的短信，这条短信试图说服他们参加近年来最大的中产阶级抗议活动。在北京，政治家正焦头烂额地试图平息由一个抵制砖窑矿工网络请愿书煽动的骚乱。

Chinese officials have had reason to worry before about the rallying power of the internet and mobile phones. Two years ago they helped activists organise protests against Japan in several Chinese cities. But the government, at least initially, sympathised with those protests. By contrast the demonstrations in Xiamen were directed at officialdom, and the slave-labour scandal embarrasses the government. It involves allegations that officials ignored kiln-owners' use of abducted boys to perform dangerous work. This has triggered a heated online debate about the political flaws that allowed such horrors to happen.

以前，中国政府官员就有理由担忧互联网和移动电话集会民众的能力。  两年前，活跃分子利用它们在中国的几个城市组织了抗议日本的活动。 但是政府，至少最初，对那些抗议活动是持支持态度的。 相反，厦门游行示威的指挥是直接发生在官方机构的，而且砖窑矿工丑事使政府陷入很尴尬的境地。 这个事件涉及了政府官员忽视窑主诱拐童工执行危险的工作的申述。 而这在互联网上引发了允许如此骇人听闻事件发生的政治失误的激烈辩论。

The text message in Xiamen, circulated in late May, called for a rally outside the city government's headquarters on June 1st to protest against plans to build a huge chemical factory on a site, pictured above, in the suburbs. It compared building the $1.4 billion plant for making paraxylene, used in polyester, to dropping an “atomic bomb” on Xiamen. It warned readers that the factory could cause leukaemia and birth deformities among the city's 2.3m residents and their offspring (hence the choice of June 1st, children's day in China).

五月下旬开始在厦门传播的短信呼吁民众于六月一日在在市政府总部外集合游行，集体抗议计划在市郊一个场所上建造一家大型化工工厂的计划。这条信息把这个建 造14亿美元的大型工厂用来制造聚酯中使用的对位二甲苯的计划比作无异于在厦门投掷一枚“原子弹” ，它警告民众这个工厂可能将使2，300，000城市居民和他们的后代患白血病并导致畸形婴儿的诞生。(所以它们特别选择6月1日作为集会日，这一天是中 国的儿童节) .

The response was remarkable. Xiamen has a thriving economy and little history of protest. Yet many thousands of people rallied and marched, even though it was Friday, a working day, and as usual hot and humid. They came mostly from China's fast-growing middle class, a group the Communist Party usually regards as a dependable bulwark of support. In many Chinese cities there have been small-scale middle-class protests over issues related to property rights. But they are rarely directed at city governments.

回应是令人惊异的， 厦门是个经济繁荣，几乎没有抗议活动历史的城市。 然而即使那天是星期五，一个工作日，，天气象往常一样湿热，仍然数千人集合并进行游行，  参与游行的人大多数是中国快速增长的中产阶级，一个通常被认为 是共产党坚定支持者的阶级。在很多中国城市曾经发生过小规模的中产阶级设计资产权的抗议， 但是他们几乎没有在市政府发生过。

Even more remarkable is that the protest occurred in the face of clear government disapproval. Civil servants were warned they might be punished for taking part. Government offices even required their employees to keep working on the weekend of June 2nd and 3rd to prevent them taking to the streets. On May 30th the government appeared to make a big concession by announcing a suspension of the project pending a further environmental review. But the protest went ahead two days later anyway. At one point some people shouted slogans calling on the city's party chief, He Lifeng, to resign, but the demonstration was peaceful. Thousands marched again on June 2nd.

更令人惊异的是这次抗议活动是在政府明确表示不赞同的情况下发生的。  国家公务员被警告如果他们参加将可能因此受到处罚。 政府办公室更要求工作在周末6月2日和6月3日上班工作以防止他们到街道去参与活动。  在5月30日政府作了一个很大的让步，公告搁置这个计划以进行一 步的环境方面的复审。  但是无论如何，两天以后抗议活动还是发生了。一部份人齐声大喊口号要求市共产党领导人何立峰辞职，但是游行示威是和平的，6月2 日成千人再次进行了游行示威。

The text message seemed to touch a raw nerve. Public confidence in the city leadership had been damaged by a proposal submitted to China's parliament in March by senior academics that the Taiwanese-owned paraxylene plant be moved further away from residential areas. Previously, say residents, the Xiamen government had given no indication that paraxylene might be hazardous. Criticism of the project began to flourish on local internet chat forums and blogs. Many complained that the plant would further ruin a once pleasant seaside city already threatened by smog and polluted seawater.

这条短信好像触到了公众的痛处。 一份由高级学者在三月份向中国议会提交的关于敦促台资聚二甲苯工厂远离居民区的提案使厦门公众对城市领导层的信任一夕崩溃。居民说，厦门政府之前 从来没有提过聚二甲苯能造成的危害。厦门当地互联网聊天论坛和网络日志中开始盛行对此项工程的批评，很多人抱怨说这个工厂将使这个已经被更远烟雾和污染的 海水威胁的舒适海边城市环境进一步恶化。

The protests in Xiamen must be worrying to officials in Beijing. Urban environments have been deteriorating across the country. If tolerance for this among the middle classes were to crumble, unrest could spread. Ominously, from the party's perspective, hundreds of Beijing residents rallied outside the offices of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) on June 5th. Their complaint was about plans to build a waste incinerator in the north-west of the city, which they said could spread toxic chemicals. Two days later SEPA called for a further investigation of the incinerator project as well as of Xiamen's urban development plans.

北京的官员无疑会担忧发生在厦门的示威游行抗议。 周边城市政治环境的恶化会影响整个国家。 如果中产阶级不再能够容忍这个状态，那么这种动乱将会蔓延。在共产党看来一个很不好的预兆是6月5日数百个北京居民在国家环境保护管理局(SEPA)外边 集会。 他们的抱怨是关于计划在城市的北方西边建造一个废物焚化炉，他们说这样将使有毒的化学制品传播。同厦门的都市发展计划一样，  两天以后国家环境保护管理 局申明将对焚化炉工程进行更进一步的调查。  

Chinese leaders have been similarly quick to respond to the torrent of online protest—and even some stiff criticism by the state-owned press—provoked by the reports of slave labour in the provinces of Shanxi in the north, and Henan, to its south. A petition posted on June 7th by fathers of abducted boys on Tianya, a popular internet discussion forum, spread rapidly. Official newspapers soon picked up the story, describing the brutal conditions in which the labourers were held captive and the indifference of local police. Within eight days China's leading politicians were reported to have stepped in. Hundreds of “slaves” were declared to have been freed and many of their bosses arrested.

中国领导人对由北部陕西和南部河南劳工报道而引发的洪水般网上抗议和甚至来自有国家级新闻媒体的尖锐批评迅速作出类似回应。一份由被诱拐童工的父亲6月7 日在天涯论坛（一个很受欢迎的网上论坛）发布的情愿书被迅速传播开来。很快，官方报纸大肆报道了这则故事，描述了那些劳工严酷的状况和当地警方的冷漠。 在8 天内，很多中国政治家被牵涉进此次事件，  数百名劳工得到自由，很多劳工老板被逮捕。  

In Xiamen, having made their last-minute concession, officials are now trying to track down behind-the-scenes organisers of the protests (some residents believe property developers, worried about the impact of the project on prices, encouraged people to take part). Notices have been put up in residential buildings calling on protesters to surrender themselves to police. But such tactics inspire far less fear than they did in the wake of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Some residents say they now want a referendum on the project. A professor at Xiamen University says that if the project's opponents win, a new " environmental consciousness"  will spread to other Chinese cities.  

厦门政府已经做出最后一分钟让步， 政府官员目前正试图找出此次抗议活动的幕后策划者(一些居民相信策划者是房地产开发商，由于担心此项工程将会对房地产价格产生影响而鼓励人们参与此次抗议 活动) .  居民区已经粘贴了要求抗议者向警方自首的公告。但是这种警告与1989集会后的措施相比威慑力要小得多。 一些居民说他们现在想要关于工程举行公民投票。  一位厦门大学的教授说如果此次工程的反对者对手得到胜利，一种新的"  环境意识的觉醒"   将被传播至中国其他的城市。   

For all their pro-green rhetoric, China's leaders would abhor this.  They remain deeply wary of environmental groups, fearful that if given a free rein they could rapidly mobilise middle-class opinion against government policies.  Nick Young of China Development Brief, a newsletter, says that these concerns increased in the wake of democratic revolutions early this decade in several former Soviet states.  Although they eased a bit last year, Mr Young thinks the government will remain cautious.  Xiamen has only one officially registered non-governmental environmental group.  It has kept itself nervously aloof from the paraxylene-plant campaign.  In Xiamen as elsewhere, it is China's online civil society that is leading the charge

尽管他们言辞是支持绿色环保的，中国领导人不支持这些言论，他们对环境组织保持着警惕，害怕如果给自由放任将导致这些环境分子迅速策动中产阶级反对政府政 策。 中国发展简报的Nich Young的一篇通讯说这种担忧是在前十年几个前苏联国家的民主革命觉醒之后加深的。杨先生认为虽然去年这种忧虑有所缓减但是政府将保持谨慎状态。厦门只 有一家官方承认的非政府的环境组织。而且这个机构已经谨慎地避开了聚二甲苯工厂运动。厦门和其他地方一样，是中国的网上民间社团领导负责这些活动。