NINGBO - More than a thousand people gathered in the eastern Chinese port city of Ningbo on Saturday to protest against plans to expand a petrochemical plant, highlighting a major challenge for the leadership as it readies for its once-in-a-decade power transition.
On Friday, protesters overturned a police car and attacked the police.
By early Saturday, protesters, watched over by police, gathered in a central shopping street in Ningbo, wearing masks and giving out pamphlets denouncing the expansion of the plant by a subsidiary of China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation in the district of Zhenhai.
"PX...Get out of Ningbo!" read one placard, in a reference to the chemical paraxylene, which the protesters said was a carcinogen.
