Trust crisis behind PX fears

More than 1,000 residents of Maoming Town have raised their banners and flags to oppose a designed plant that is expected to manufacture paraxylene (PX) in March.

PX is a major raw material for making polyester products. Traditionally, PX production lines are attached to petrochemical engineering projects.

Actually, this is only one of a series of protests against PX projects across China. Since 2007, a number of planned PX projects in Xiamen, Dalian, Ningbo and Kunming have been canceled after resident protests.

Another side of the story is China’s current PX shortage. The domestic PX industry managed to meet only 47 percent of China's demand for PX in 2013, and the supply gap will run up to 9.5 million tonnes in 2014, said a report by the economics and technology research institute under the China Petroleum and Chemical (Sinopec) Corp., the state-owned oil refining giant.

Trust crisis towards PX

Cao Xianghong, academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said this dilemma is not a scientific problem as disputes regarding the PX’s safety issue do not exist among the professionals, but a phobia triggered by the social trust crisis, according to a report by Oriental Outlook magazine.

Meanwhile, explanations regarding the PX safety issue hailing from academic circles cannot be completely accepted by the public. “Some people doubt everything -- information released by the government and reports from the mainstream media. On the contrary, they are convinced of unproven messages spread online and micro blogs which usually are aimed against the government and state-owned enterprises,” he said.

“What’s worse, some locals don’t even trust those experts or technicians who speak for the local government. This is a serious trust crisis,” he worried.

Yu Wei, senior engineer & executive director of the Zhejiang Public Participation Local-level Partnership Projects under the EU-China Environmental Governance Program, held that residents are most concerned about the safety of the PX upstream and downstream process. They are worried about the consequences of possible accidents during its production and transportation.

“However, accidents such as explosions have occurred several times across PX factories. Actually, these factories have passed the environmental impact assessment with law-abiding operations; yet uncertainties cannot be avoided in the production process, including in operations,” he said during an exclusive interview with Chinagate.cn.

Yu supposed that it’s time to build a public participation platform to invite all stakeholders to discuss the issues at hand in a both fair and open manner. Transparency is key in solving the trust crisis.