Page 173 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Chapter 6. The Xiamen PX plant event

develops, it cannot grow beyond the state’s control’ (Yu and Xing, 2011, p.84).

6.4.2.1 The Fish Community Forum (xmfish.com): autonomic operation but under
government’s restrictions follow government’s instructions

During the Two Sessions (NPC and CPPCC) in March 2007, the most popular
topic was the petition co-signed by more than 100 CPPCC members against the PX

plant in Xiamen. However, because the plant was expected to make huge contribution
to the local GDP and as it had been approved by the national department, the main re-
action was to guide the public to support the project saying it was beneficial for local
development. However, concerns for environmental impact, toxic emissions, and dam-

age to the landscape kept growing. Xiamen residents who used to be very proud of the
town’s environment began to discuss the topic on the Fish Community Forum. Between
March and June of 2007, discussions related to the topic kept appearing and it reached
a point that on one day, of 30,000 total posts, 20,000 focused on PX. In the middle of

May, the call for a ‘collective stroll on 1 June’ was spread via SMS, online posts and
QQ groups. Administrators of Fish Community Forum felt increasing pressure from
government departments. They were forced to write guarantee letters by the Network
Security Department, and local police constantly visited the company to ‘ask for infor-

mation’ and some departments even visited unannounced for urgent inspections. The
staff experienced huge pressure during the time.
On 29 May, the government forced Fish Community Forum to censor all posts
before publishing, and anything related to PX was prohibited (Huang, 2010). Admin-

istrators realised that the forum had already lost the initiative in sharing information
between the grassroots in Xiamen, and they decided to close the website for a week.
During that period, users could only access a picture of the landscape in Xiamen with
words ‘Love Xiamen, Love Fish’ when opening the website. On 1 June, citizens began

to stroll on the street. With the shutdown of Fish Community Forum, information and
images about the stroll were moved to Tianya Forum.
Fish Community Forum is owned and operated by Xiamen Retui Network Limit-
ed, which is a private company. It has a licence issued by Ministry of Industry and In-

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