Shanghai Daily ran a story today about pollution from a production facility in Shanxi. Typical case for a pollution story, even better as an example of local protectionism that could represent not only environmental issues, but also intellectual property protection, foreign investment licensing, and various kinds of local regulatory enforcement and oversight. You get a little of everything here, including local financial issues, co-opting of government officials, local enforcement campaigns designed merely as PR stunts, etc. Moreover, because the story was broken by a CCTV investigation, you obviously have some federalism issues here as well (i.e. State vs. local government). Read the article and extrapolate:

ALTHOUGH none of the smelting facilities in a north China town can meet
environmental requirements, they have kept up production for years,
creating serious pollution and posing a big threat to the health of
local residents.

Operators
of the facilities could yet still survive inspections or campaigns by
local authorities against pollution because of the local government’s
perfunctory manner, said a CCTV investigative report from Caochuan Town
of Pinglu County, Shanxi Province, over the weekend.

Even
worse, the number of production facilities that fell foul of
environment requirements increased despite a series of clampdowns by
the local government in recent years, according to the report.

If you didn’t make trouble, the local government would not trouble you, CCTV cited workers as saying.

According
to the CCTV report, the local authorities had taken measures, such as
fining and giving polluters a deadline to rectify their environment
problems, to improve the issue over the recent years.

But the campaigns were finally proved to be shows made for higher authorities and local residents, it said.

The
economic factor was believed to be the major reason why the local
government allowed production to continue, according to CCTV.

If
all these facilities were shut down, the town would face a loss of more
than 50 million yuan (US$6 million), a figure equal to two years’
fiscal revenue of the town before the smelting industry arrived there,
CCTV said. At least 1,800 workers would be laid off.