Environmental disputes in China: A case study of media coverage of the 2012 Ningbo anti-PX protest
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Environmental disputes have surged in China over the past few years. For many scholars, this trend indicates the proliferation of “Not In My Back Yard” resistance among ordinary Chinese citizens. Yet, to what extent does the “Not In My Back Yard” label accurately reflect the complexity of Chinese environmental activism? This article seeks to address this question through a case study of the 2012 Ningbo anti-para-xylene protest. By analyzing how the event was reported in four news sources (Xinhua News Agency, China Daily, South China Morning Post, and Associated Press), the article reveals that while the narratives of domestic sources presented the event as an unfortunate incident caused by irrational citizens, oversea sources presented it as a liberal resistance initiated by China’s rising middle class against an authoritarian government. Both storylines, however, failed to recognize the urban–rural dynamics underlying the protest. Such neglect not only raises concerns regarding the inherent ambiguity of China’s environmental activism but also invites us to think beyond the stereotypical label of “Not In My Back Yard.”
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.012 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".