In Cleanup Effort, Beijing Moved Factories to Clog Air Elsewhere

It was 1959 when the labyrinthine Beijing Coking-Chemical Plant opened its doors in the capital's southeastern corner as part of the country's industrialization push. The factory employed 10,000 workers at its peak and powered most of the city's stoves and residential heating systems. For China's leaders, it was a source of great pride that the smoke emanating from the factory's six chimneys never stopped in its 47-year history.

Liu Yue, 22, said that since the coking factory shut down on July 15, 2006, he has finally been able to hang his clothes outside to dry without fear that they would be coated with black coal dust. Across the street, 56-year-old Li Zunhua, a retired farmer, said the bok choy she plants is growing normally for the first time in the 30 years she has lived here.

"When I was growing up, the sky was never blue. It was yellow. Things are much better now," said Liu, who sells Converse sneakers for a living, while squinting at the clear sky on a recent weekend.

The drive from the factory's old location in Beijing to its new home near Zhang's fishing village in Tangshan in the eastern part of Hebei, not far from where the Great Wall cuts through the province, is striking. The shining skyscrapers of the capital give way to endless factories enveloped in an acrid, fog-like haze.

Once an agricultural backwater, Tangshan has sought to remake itself as a center for heavy industry. By many measures, this plan has been incredibly successful. Tangshan, now the heart of China's steel industry, has exceeded the national average for growth for the past decade. It is now the economic engine of Hebei province and boasts an annual gross domestic product of $50 billion, ranking it 20th in the country.

But there have been costs to this development. Tangshan's deputy mayor, Xin Zhichun, acknowledges that the local government may have gone too far in allowing polluting factories.

Xin said that although the city recently agreed to accept some of the capital's worst polluters, Tangshan imposed strict conditions. He said it demanded that they drastically reduce their pollutants.

As a result, "not a single screw was moved from Beijing to Tangshan," Xin said. "It's a completely new construction. At least a few hundred environmentally friendly, energy-saving and emissions-cutting technologies are being used."

The new home of the Beijing Coking-Chemical Plant is just outside Caozhuang, a tiny village of about 2,000 residents who live in ramshackle huts that look like they are under siege from the mammoth factories that surround it. Zhang and other residents have been fighting the new industrial plants for the past four years, taking to the streets but with little success.

In spring 2007, a tall, muscular man named Jia Jingquan who raises wolves for a living and was then the village's leader, confronted local government officials. He asked them to better compensate residents for the land acquired for industry and provide subsidies to help them move.

He and other opponents were warned to stop their campaign. When they didn't, Jia was arrested on what he and other residents said were trumped up charges of getting into a fistfight with a neighbor. Jia himself was beaten up by authorities, another villager said. More than 100 residents marched to the local court to demand Jia's release. After six months, in September, he was finally allowed to return home but was stripped of his title.

A Tangshan government official said the charges against Jia were legitimate: "There is no such thing as he got jailed because he protested polluting factories."

Reached at his home, Jia, 53, said some "selfish" officials had sent him to jail because they did not want him to complain about the factories but declined to comment further. "I worry they will take me back again," Jia said. "I cannot say anything bad, so I cannot say anything at all."

Staff researchers Wu Meng and Crissie Ding contributed to this report.