The remediation policy and citizen participation: the An-Shun Plant case

The purpose of this article was to study the remediation policy and community citizen participation for the An-Shun Plant case. Important policy stakeholders, including community leaders, bureaucrats, the environmentalist and related scholars were interviewed. It was found that community citizens were not asked to participate in the remediation policymaking. Community citizens were able to participate because governments were under pressure of the environmentalist, media and community leaders. In addition, community citizens were not fully informed of the environmental pollution. And there was only remediation instead of remediation policy formed in the process of policymaking. Different government departments were not well integrated in the remediation project. It was suggested that both city and central government should encourage citizen participation and/or build the mechanism of community citizen participation including creating incentives for community participation. Policy networking among policy stakeholders was suggested in order to implement the remediation policy smoothly.