Ever since a $2.1 billion plant that converts coal into natural gas began operating in August on a hill above his village, the 37-year-old ex-policeman and his family have suffered a burning sensation in their throats that keeps them awake at night. So have his fellow villagers, who also complain of dizziness and repeated colds.<\/p>\n
After five months of watching clouds of smoke belching into the air from a red-and-white striped smokestack, they\u2019d had enough. On a mid-January morning, more than 200 people dragged makeshift wooden barricades across the snow and blocked the road leading to the plant. They stayed for two days, in temperatures that dipped as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit). Their demand: shut down the installation that was making them and their children ill.<\/p>\n
Nothing changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t care if our children get sick or how much the pollution is affecting our village,\u201d said Yetahon, a stocky man dressed in a gray sweater and brown leather jacket, whose village is near the Kazakhstan border. When senior police officers asked him for the names of those who organized the protest, Yetahon said he turned in his uniform and quit.<\/p>\n
Under Pressure<\/strong><\/p>\n Yetahon, like most people in his village, is a Uighur who lives in the restive Xinjiang province, home to 10 million mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking members of this ethnic minority. They face restrictions<\/a> on their movement and religious worship.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we do nothing, then we live with the pollution and the damage to our health,\u201d he said a week after the demonstration. \u201cIf we stand up and protest, that also brings hardship.\u201d<\/p>\n Under pressure from an increasingly vocal middle class incensed by record levels of pollution, China in September said it won\u2019t approve the construction of new coal-fired power plants around eastern cities. The upshot is an outsourcing of pollution west and north to provinces including Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia that are far from the glare of the media and where dissent is more tightly controlled.<\/p>\n Pollution Deaths<\/strong><\/p>\n A March 1 attack by knife-wielding assailants that killed 29 people and injured more than 100 in southwest China was blamed by officials on separatist forces from Xinjiang. President Xi Jinping<\/a> ordered a crackdown on terrorist activities, while opposing any backlash against ethnic minorities, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.<\/p>\n Xi said last week pollution was Beijing\u2019s most prominent challenge and foreign companies and residents have joined the chorus of criticism by local residents. The leadership said it plans to shutter 50,000 small coal-fired furnaces this year and reduce air pollution that results in as many as half a million premature deaths each year nationwide, according to an article in the London-based Lancet medical journal co-authored by China\u2019s former Health Minister Chen Zhu.<\/p>\n At the same time, China is currently building as many as 70 coal-fired power plants in the western part of the country to meet the nation\u2019s energy needs, according to Xizhou Zhou<\/a>, Director of China Energy at IHS Inc., an Englewood, Colorado-based consulting company. In addition, the government has planned 30 coal-to-gas plants, some of which are already operational like the one that sparked protests in Yetahon\u2019s village. Of those, at least 20 will be built in Xinjiang, according to a study by Ding Yanjun, an associate professor in Tsinghua University\u2019s Department of Thermal Engineering.<\/p>\n \u2018People Die\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIn the short term, these projects will help the coastal cities a little bit, but in the long term this is really, really bad for the environment,\u201d said Chi-Jen Yang, a research scientist at Duke University in North Carolina who focuses on energy policy. \u201cIt will help the smog on the coast and move the pollution to western provinces.\u201d<\/p>\n Aypujan Niyaz, a 34-year-old chemical factory worker who lives in Chuluqay, a few minutes\u2019 drive from Yetahon\u2019s village, puts it more bluntly: \u201cIn the east it is Chinese, that\u2019s the difference,\u201d he said. \u201cHere it\u2019s over 90 percent minorities — Uighurs, Kazakhs. If there\u2019s pollution they will just say, \u2019Oh well, there\u2019s pollution.\u2019 If people die they will just say, \u2019Oh well, people die.’\u201d<\/p>\n Climate Change<\/strong><\/p>\n Comments by Chinese officials and policy documents point to Xinjiang\u2019s coal resources as crucial to powering the country\u2019s economic growth and driving development as part of the country\u2019s \u201cGo West\u201d investment policy. Xinjiang\u2019s economy is less than one third the size of Hebei, which is China\u2019s most polluted province and surrounds Beijing<\/a>.<\/p>\n Xinjiang should become a strategic energy base and its resources should be developed, Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli<\/a> said at a September meeting on Xinjiang attended by members of the Politburo Standing Committee, China\u2019s most powerful ruling body.<\/p>\n The Ministry of Environmental Protection, the National Development and Reform Commission, which approves energy projects, and the Communist Party Committee of Xinjiang didn\u2019t reply to questions sent by fax.<\/p>\n China says it needs to continue rapid economic development to ensure all its people benefit. Responsibility for solving climate change<\/a> should be shouldered primarily by the U.S. and European nations since they produced the bulk of emissions that cause global warming during their industrialization, China said in a 2011 white paper. Per capita energy consumption<\/a> in China was less than a third of the U.S. in 2011 and about two thirds of the European Union, according to World Bank data.<\/p>\n Globally Resilient<\/strong><\/p>\n China\u2019s continued embrace of coal shows how, despite a concerted campaign by environmentalists and public health experts to stanch its use, coal is proving globally resilient.<\/p>\n Even in Europe, where pushing renewable energy has been a priority of the EU, utilities are expanding open-pit mines that produce a cheap, dirty-burning coal known as lignite to turn back sharply rising electricity prices. In the U.S., a spike in natural gas prices has some analysts projecting that utility coal use could supply 40 percent of power production within three years after slumping to a record low of 37 percent in 2012.<\/p>\n Clean Energy<\/strong><\/p>\n Even though China is currently the top global investor<\/a> in clean energy, it will still be reliant on coal for most of its electricity in 2030 — by when its power needs will have more than doubled, according to a report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Already the world\u2019s biggest consumer of coal and biggest emitter of greenhouse gases<\/a>, that means China will add the equivalent of the total installed power capacity of the U.K. each year.<\/p>\n Much of China\u2019s new power generation capacity will be in Xinjiang where there are plans to add a total of 48.9 gigawatts of capacity, according to IHS data. That\u2019s more than double any other province.<\/p>\n Electricity produced in Xinjiang began coursing eastward in late January with the inauguration of the world\u2019s longest ultra-high voltage line, which starts in the city of Hami, home to half a million people. A front-page article in the government-controlled Hami Daily in 2012 extolled the power plans: \u201cSending Xinjiang\u2019s Power East Awakens a Sea of Sleeping Coal<\/a>,\u201d read the headline. China is investing<\/a> as much as half a trillion dollars in power lines to carry electricity to the east.<\/p>\n Spoiled Dates<\/strong><\/p>\n The city, in eastern Xinjiang, has long been known for its sweet, golden melons that for centuries refreshed travelers on the old Silk Road. Now, towering smokestacks and dormitories that house power plant construction workers interrupt the horizon where the brown sands of the Gobi Desert meet a shimmering blue sky.<\/p>\n A few kilometers from a coal-fired plant<\/a> built by a unit of state-owned Shenhua Group Corp. that opened in 2011, villagers in Huicheng on the outskirts of Hami say pollution is affecting their livelihoods. Standing in the garden of his home, Ibrahim Rozi rolls a dust-covered date between his fingers. The pollution has caused them to shrivel and the dates fetch only a third of the price they used to, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir color isn\u2019t good,\u201d said Rozi, 34, who describes how a thin layer of black soot covers the snow in winter. \u201cThe pollution has gotten much more serious.\u201d<\/p>\n Police Presence<\/strong><\/p>\n In a neighboring village, Li Zhihua, a 21-year-old Han woman, remembers when the fields surrounding the plant were filled with \u201csome of the sweetest\u201d melons in China. She says the melons are smaller and have lost their taste because of the pollution and the fact the installation devours scarce water resources.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was growing up here, Hami melons were so sweet,\u201d Li said, sitting near the doorway that leads into the courtyard of the family home. \u201cIn the past few years they barely have any flavor.\u201d<\/p>\n Shenhua didn\u2019t respond to questions sent by fax.<\/p>\n Hawkers selling round sesame-covered breads line the two-lane road that runs through the village. Butchers wielding hatchets lop off chunks of lamb from carcasses hanging from trees.<\/p>\n The other ubiquitous presence on Xinjiang\u2019s roads is the police. Drivers are regularly stopped and their cars searched at checkpoints.<\/p>\n Ethnic Tensions<\/strong><\/p>\n Two Bloomberg News reporters speaking to a family in late January, in their home across the road from the Hami plant, were interrupted when three police officers entered the courtyard as they talked to two women. The reporters were asked to show their ID documents and one policeman went inside. Officers then waited in their patrol car until the reporters had left.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.docs.uyghuramerican.org\/images\/iddjaVtQdgn8.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.docs.uyghuramerican.org\/images\/iU3RjJpuxUSU.jpg\")
<\/p>\n