On April 28, the Beijing Zhongke Innovation Park project, established in the downtown area of Nanshao Town in Beijing’s Changping District, recently changed its design planning scheme to house the biopharmaceutical industry and virus lab. The park is adjacent to a living gathering area that brings together a large number of schools, commercial areas and water diversion channels, and local people are concerned about pollution and safety issues.
Local residents have reported on social media that they have not received a positive official response to their questions to the authorities, and that officials have evaded and shirked their responsibilities, and even hurled insults, leaving residents with no choice but to pull banners in protest.
It is understood that the plot of land of Beijing Zhongke Innovation Park project covers an area of 96,974 square meters and has a total construction area of 225,590.6 square meters. According to the sky-eye search, there are already several biopharmaceutical companies such as Beijing Yingkorui Innovation Medicine and Weikang Pharmaceutical (Beijing) Drug Research Institute Co.
According to the park’s “construction content and scale” content shows that “the project is located in Beijing Changping District, No. 79 West Shuangying Road, No. 24, Level 1 101, the project name is Yingkorui biosafety secondary laboratory project …… “, “after the completion of the project laboratory can undertake the third and fourth category of the hazard level of viruses, bacteria, fungi, chlamydia, mycoplasma and other pathogenic microorganisms related tests ……”, ” No more than 36,000 rats and mice throughout the year ……”
A local resident revealed that the project’s party had let slip that “there is also a ‘pilot experiment’ project in the park.” A Beijing Children’s Hospital hematologist said of the potential risks of the pilot experiment, “The pilot experiment is the scariest, non-stop trial and error, the most dangerous” because she has seen too many children with blood disorders for this reason.
What makes local residents even more angry is that in the “Public Notice on the Planning and Design Plan of the Zhongke Innovation Park Project” (hereinafter referred to as “Public Notice”) published by the Changping Branch of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Planning and Natural Resources, the nature of the industrial land in the park is M1.
M1 belongs to a class of industrial land with basically no interference and pollution to the environment such as residential and public facilities. While the industrial land for pharmaceutical manufacturing belongs to the second category of industrial land with some interference and pollution to the residential environment, the land for chemical industry belongs to the third category of industrial land with serious interference and pollution.
The reporter obtained a telephone recording of a conversation between representatives of local residents and the relevant authorities in Beijing. In the recording, the residents’ representative reflected the problem to the staff, “the content of the public notice” is ambiguous, and no changes to the biopharmaceutical industrial park are written into the “public notice”, which is not reflected in the developer’s public notice changes. During the public notice period, the public has opinions on the Public Notice, which must be re-advertised.”
For the M1 site why the change to biopharmaceutical industrial park, the recording, the staff did not make any positive response, repeatedly stressed that the content of the “Public Notice” is clear. But in the “public notice” did not mention the biopharmaceutical industry park.
Resident representatives in the recording revealed that “the project site is surrounded by Nanshao Middle School, elementary school, kindergarten, 19.5 meters from the project site is the Lujin district, next to several other communities. Less than 1 mile from the project site is the Beijing ‘Mother River’ Jingmi Diversion Canal, which runs through the whole of Beijing, and residents of many districts in Beijing are drinking from this diversion canal.”
Reporters called the Changping Branch of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Planning and Natural Resources to learn more about the matter, but no one answered.
According to mainland self-published media, Mr. Wang, executive vice general manager of the project management, Beijing Changping Science and Technology Park Development Co., said that biopharmaceuticals are different from other pharmaceutical industries where explosions have occurred, “The biopharmaceuticals we do are called innovative drugs.”
Changping District Ecological Environment Bureau staff said, “the park into these pharmaceutical companies, has not yet reached the approval stage of the environmental assessment. That is, after each enterprise it comes in, environmental protection is a kind of standard are required.”
But according to resident representatives in the recording, “first to do the EIA of the pharmaceutical and biological industrial park, and then to do the EIA of the resident pharmaceutical enterprises. To be clear, if you want to do pharmaceutical-type projects, you must have public participation after doing the EIA. To bail out without doing an EIA and without public participation is wrong on top of wrong, knowing the law and breaking it!”
Due to the poor supervision by the regulatory authorities of the Chinese Communist Party, various pharmaceutical factory explosions and leaks have occurred frequently in the past two years, causing a large number of innocent people to be killed and injured, while the official follow-up of the pursuit of responsibility has gone nowhere.
On September 28, 2020, an explosion occurred during a test at Tianmen Chutian Biotechnology Co., Ltd, resulting in 6 deaths and 2 injuries.
On September 15, 2020, a Brucella leak occurred in Lanzhou Biopharmaceutical Factory. Officials said it caused 3,245 cases of infected people, and the biopharmaceutical plant was 500 meters away from the district. The Lanzhou biopharmaceutical plant was moved only after the serious accident. Local residents infected with brucellosis lost their ability to work, have children, and spend their lives in the torment of the disease.
On February 8, 2021, an explosion occurred in the API workshop of Liaoning Kang Yuan Hua Wei Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. during a pilot test, resulting in 2 deaths and 16 injuries.
The Beijing Zhongke Innovation Park is less than 20 meters away from a residential area, and there are 70,000 to 80,000 residents in the densely populated local area.
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