Chalk it up as another victory for popular protest. On Saturday, thousands of aggrieved citizens gathered in the coastal city of Qidong in Jiangsu to demonstrate against plans to build a pipeline discharging industrial waste into the sea.
Things got heated. Protesters overturned cars, ransacked government offices, looted officials' wine supplies and bashed up police officers. The local party boss even lost his shirt in the affray.
The authorities responded by drafting in hundreds of riot police, but to forestall further protests officials also went on television to announce they were permanently scrapping plans to build the waste outfall.
The Qidong punch-up is merely the latest in a string of protests around the country in which residents concerned about high pollution levels have forced local authorities to backpedal on proposed industrial projects.
Earlier this month work on the construction of a copper plant in the Sichuan city of Shifang was halted after local residents took to the streets to complain about the environmental damage it would cause.
In December the authorities in Haimen in Guangdong province suspended plans for a new coal-fired power station in the town following mass protests. And last August demonstrators in Dalian successfully demanded the closure of a chemicals plant located near the centre of the city.
Commentators have written hundreds of articles about the political and social implications of this newfound, and newly successful, strain of environmental activism on the mainland.