Among the steps Beijing has taken to clean its air is to use what we might call the California strategy — move pollution concerns far away from wealthy, environmentally conscious city-dwellers — who nonetheless derive the benefits of that industry (well, everyone except Ed Begley and the like), while congratulating themselves about their environmental progress. California, though, manages to keep a smiley face on the process. China has the iron fist.

The relocation of factories out of Beijing is part of a mass migration of Chinese industry in recent years from wealthier cities, which have become environmentally conscious, to less developed ones. Critics have described the trend as “internal colonization” and questioned whether the country is truly serious about dealing with its pollution or just moving it around and hiding it. . . .Beijing’s anti-pollution campaign is part of a broader attempt to remake a city that built its early fortunes on heavy industry into a hub for finance and technology. When the city began its cleanup efforts in 2001, it identified hundreds of steel, chemical, automobile, electronics companies and others that were dumping waste into the air and water, and ordered them to leave. More than 200 have stopped operating in Beijing; another 40 will be gone by the end of the year. . . .
The new home of the Beijing Coking-Chemical Plant is just outside Caozhang, 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 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. . . .
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.”