Quotes from around China this week.

“The major reason for mass incidents is the environment, and everyone cares about it now. If you want to build a plant, and if the plant may cause cancer, how can people remain calm?”
- Chen Jiping, a former leading member of the Communist Party’s Committee of Political and Legislative Affairs. Bloomberg

"If they don't get it right, instead of growing a middle class, they are going to grow a huge underclass in the city, and that's very scary."
- Kam Wing Chan, a population expert at the University of Washington on China’s drive to urbanize rural residents. Reuters

“Anyone who tries to fabricate or piece together a sensational story to serve a political motive will not be able to blacken the name of others nor whitewash themselves.”
- Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on accusations that China is engaging in cyber-espionage. New York Times

“There’s no such a thing as protecting the tongqi [women who unwittingly marry gay men] without protecting the gays.”
- Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences Researcher Xing Fei. Caijing

“The old family and social networks that people used to rely on for finding a husband or wife have fallen apart. There’s a huge sense of dislocation in China, and young people don’t know where to turn.”
- James Farrer, an American sociologist, on the difficulty of finding a spouse in China for the rich and poor alike. New York Times

“Leaders are signaling that they want movement toward a market economy, so they will be factoring in population policy into the overall economic planning. My reading is that will mean that population control targets will be weaker and weaker over time. And we will see that the one-child policy era is over. The way to interpret this is that the laws are still in effect, but the judges and the policemen have all been fired. Soon the laws will also change.”
-Wang Feng, a population expert and director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy in Beijing. Wall Street Journal