Maoming Government Public Opinion Management PX Project Case Studies

Along with the rapid development of China’s industry, the society and the public are increasing aware of the environmental issues. In addition, the environmental issues are resulting in increasing sudden public events, which particularly tend to attract public opinion’s attention. Regardless of the Xiamen PX event in 2006 or Maoming PX event in 2014, it was the sudden public event caused by the environmental issues and moreover, each time has become a hot media attention. With the PX projected in many domestic cities, it has generated some issues to be addressed for the city government, especially the public opinion management. From the various domestic sudden public events caused by PX project, we can see that some local governments could handle the public opinion well which contributed to the rapid recovery of local politics and economy; while some local governments dealt with the public opinion in an inappropriate way, leading to not only block in the launching of PX project but also the outbreak of large-scale mass incidents.This paper chose the Maoming city, situated in Guangdong Province, towards the public opinion management on the local outbreak PX event as a case study. Maoming PX event was one of the latest domestic sudden public events caused by environmental issues. Throughout this event, Maoming government has executed loads of propaganda work before its initiating; however, it was still upgraded that burst the collective public protest. After the outbreak, the government has also performed some public opinion management, but eventually the government had to promise stopping this PX project construction so as to end this public event. During this investigation, literature summarize, case analysis and comparative analysis methods were integrated to sort out and analyze the public opinion development on Maoming PX project. From the three aspects(maintaining the right of public opinion, intervening the public opinion, guiding the public opinion) that Maoming government towards the public citizens, this paper has clarified the behavior of public opinion management regarding the PX events by Maoming government. Besides, its drawbacks and resulted consequence have also been analyzed and presented. Finally, the experience and lessons towards the public opinion management of sudden public events have been summarized for government.This paper aims to find out the more scientific methods on the public opinion management for government through the case study. It is also intent to enable the government to effectively manage the public opinion, which contributes the events progressing towards the expected direction.