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How greed turned river into pea soup and left village in despair

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The waters of Guangxi's Pangling River, once crystal clear, now run like yellow pea soup past the Jingxi county village where Wu Zhimeng was born 54 years ago.

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Shandong Xinfa Group has invested 3 billion yuan (HK$3.4 billion) in an aluminium plant in Jingxi, on the border with Vietnam, and plans to invest 17 billion more. But what was touted as a pillar industry for the impoverished county - average rural income less than 3,000 yuan a year in 2008 - has flooded one village, polluted water sources and reduced crop yields.

Tension in the area reached boiling point earlier this month, with thousands of villagers attacking the Shandong Xinfa aluminium plant near the flooded village of Lingwan.

Wu, from nearby Nianmengtun village, said villagers were concerned about the long-term impact on their health if they used water tainted by run-off from the aluminium plant.

'I've never seen such yellowish and murky water coming from hillside springs and in nearby rivers,' he said. 'For years, the water was so clean and clear that youngsters in my village used to drink it without boiling it first.'

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Ninety-nine per cent of Jingxi's 600,000 people are Zhuang, members of China's largest ethnic minority. However, until last year its deputy Communist Party chief was Zhao Tingyong , a Shandong native who is also the manager of the aluminium plant.

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