Displacement and resettlement in the Three Gorges Dam

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The financial support for this research was provided by the Johns Hopkins University. I should also like to thank Professor Russell Moses at Nanjing University, who spent time reviewing this article and gave me numerous advice.

Notes

1. Michael Cernea ‘Risks, safeguards and reconstruction: a model for population displacement and resettlement’ in Michael Cernea and Christopher McDowell eds, Risks and Reconstruction – Experiences of Resettlers and Refugees. Washington: The World Bank, 2000, pp. 11–55.

2. Michael Cernea ‘For a New Economics of Resettlement: a Sociological Critique of the Compensation Principle’ (unpublished, communication to the author).

3. ‘According to the World Bank, each year about four million people are displaced by approximately 300 large dams (…) in addition six million people are displaced by the urban development and transportation programs that are started each year.’ Michael Cernea, Hydropower Dams and Social Impacts: A sociological Perspective, Environment Papers, Social Assessment Series no. 044, The World Bank, January 1997, p. 6.

4. See for example, the analysis made by Bettina Gransow of the South West China Railway Project in Guizhou province. ‘Social Assessment of Resettlement in China’, paper presented at the International Symposium on Resettlement and Social Development, Nanjing, May 2002.

5. The important distinction between resettlees and refugees was made by Michael Cernea and Christopher McDowell, Risks and Reconstruction – Experiences of Resettlers and Refugees.

6. During a lunch with some cadres, one of them told me that I should speak of planned migration, instead of forced migration stating that it would be more politically correct.

7. This phenomenon has been analyzed by many scholars among whom Dorothy J. Solinger ‘The Floating Population in The Cities: Chances for Assimilation?’, in Deborah S, Davis, ed., Urban Spaces in Contemporary China – The Potential For Autonomy and Community in Post-Mao China. London: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 113–39; and Deborah Davis, ibid.

8. Ertan is the highest Chinese dam: 240 m height. It is an arch dam. It was built in Sichuan province on the Yalongjiang. It has an installed capacity of 3.300 MW, making it second after the TGDP.

9. This was the centre of the debate introduced by Karl Wittfogel in this famous book, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957. Wittfogel, following Marx on this point, developed the idea that hydraulic works involved a highly structured society, a strong bureaucracy and a powerful chief whose main function was to dominate nature. Wittfogel viewed ancient China as the best example to illustrate his theory.

10. The classification of reservoir relocates appears in Zhongguo shuili nianjian (annual statistical report on Chinese hydraulics) and in Shuili fupin yu kuqu kaifa dongtai (Trends of hydraulics poverty relief and development of reservoir areas). The former publication is an annual report written by scholars from the National Research Center for Resettlement at Hohai University, Nanjing. It has a restricted diffusion.

11. During an interview in November 2000 with the Director of the Bureau of Reservoir Resettlement Development (Ministry of Water Resources), he explained that taking into consideration social factors was important for the success of resettlement planning and he added that his bureau would soon recruit some sociologists and anthropologists.

12. A large dam has a height of 15 m or more from the foundation to the crest, or it is 5 to 15 m high with a reservoir of more than 3 million m³, according to the definition provided by the International Commission on Large Dams

13. Zhongguo shuili nianjian (China Statistical Yearbook), Beijing State Statistics Press, 1999.

14. Zhongguo shuili nianjian (China Statistical Yearbook), Beijing State Statistics Press, 1999. In 1993, China for the first time had to import oil and since then keeps on doing so.

15. Zhongguo shuili nianjian (China Statistical Yearbook), Beijing State Statistics Press, 1999. The two nuclear power stations generate around 1% of the national capacity for electricity.

16. Sun Yat-sen, The International Development in China, New York: Putman's sons, 1929.

17. In February 1979, a Ministry of Water Conservancy was established. It was merged with the Ministry of Power in March 1982 becoming the Ministry of Water Resources and Electric Power.

18. Li Peng has been a strong advocate of the TGDP. He declared in 1992, ‘The Three Gorges dam will show the rest of the world that Chinese people have high aspirations and the capacities to successfully build the world's largest water conservancy and hydroelectric power project’. He was not the only leader to praise the dam. Judith Shapiro quotes Jiang Zemin in November 1997 when the Yangzi was diverted, ‘From old, the Chinese people have had a brave history of carrying out activities to conquer, open up and utilize nature. (…) the Chinese people have had a strong struggle spirit of reforming nature, of Man Must Conquer Nature’ Judith Shapiro, Man's War, Against Nature – Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 64, 205.

19. The issue was so controversial that, in 1986, the Central government asked to re-examine the project and do more feasibility studies. During two years, a team of Canadian specialists completed a feasibility study recommending, in conclusion, starting the work. R Fuggle and WT Smith, Experience with Dams in Water and Energy Resource Development in the People's Republic of China, WCD Country Review Paper, 2000.

20. This is explained by Kenneth Lieberthal and Michel Oksenberg as the bargaining that the different levels of the administrative hierarchy performed in order to gain something out of the big project decided by central authorities. Reaching a consensus with so diverse interests proved to be difficult. Policy Making in China – Leaders, Structures, and Process. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998, pp. 269–338. This analysis based on data collected between the1950s and 1986 is still pertinent even if the most dramatic changes occurred after 1989. The relations within the administration were modified after 4 June, critics or negative comments on the TGDP were not possible any more as they meant criticizing the government. The issue was even more sensitive than before 1989.

21. ‘The conclusion of this project constitutes the offering up of a major gift to the party on the occasion of its 16th congress’, said Li Peng, ‘It shows the fighting spirit of the Chinese people and the superiority of the socialist system’. (Associated Press, 6 November 2002)

22. Official schedule given by Wang Rushu, Senior Engineer, ‘The Environment and Resettlement of TGDP. in Varna C.V.J. WCPU – Green Power 2, 2nd International Conference, Accelerated Development of Hydro Power Resources in the 21st Century, Proceedings, Yichang, 2000, pp. II1–II14)

23. ‘Sanxia shuiku 139 mi shuiwei yu chuanyun’ (the level of water in the reservoir is 139 metres for navigation) Zhongguo sanxia gongcheng bao, 5 November 2003.

24. Reservoir inundation: 632 km² on the main stream – 452 km² along the Yangzi's tributaries. Total surface inundated, 1084 km². The maximum water level will be 175 m (official figures given by Wang Rushu, Varna, 2000).

25. In comparing the Chinese statistical yearbook, I come to an estimation of 60% rural versus 40% urban. It is difficult to get a more precise percentage, as figures vary greatly between statistical sources.

26. In 1990, the National Research Centre on Resettlement was established in Nanjing. The scholars affiliated to the Centre have translated into Chinese important texts from the World Bank, and they did some preliminary studies for the government before resettlement and assessment afterwards. They did several researches on Xiaolandi hydraulic dam. World Bank ‘China: Xiaolandi Resettlement Project’, Report no. 12527-CHA, 1994.

27. ‘The problem in regard to international standards and regulations in China is not their adoption but their implementation and enforcement’. Richard Louis Edmonds, ed., Managing the Chinese Environment, Studies on Contemporary China. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 4.

28. I did not use the term ‘law’ because in Western languages it has a very precise meaning and it is adopted by the people's delegate, but in Chinese it is more fluctuant (at least until March 2000 when a text was adopted by deputies on legislative procedure. (I am grateful to Stéphanie Balme who explained this point to me). The term ‘law’ is very seldom used concerning Three Gorges resettlement issues. The two texts from the State Council issued in 1993 and 2001 that we referred to before are called tiaoli, meaning regulations or ordinances.

29. When asked why the Ministry of Water, with such a long experience of resettlement, has not been put in charge of the TGDP, cadres told me that it would have been to big to be handled by the Ministry already busy with other projects. It seems also that as it was considered a national priority, it needed top-level attention. It is the only project run that way.

30. ‘All mineral resources, waters, forests … and other natural resources are owned by the state’ (article 9 of the constitution). ‘Land in the cities is owned by the State. Land in the rural and suburban areas is owned by collective entities except for those portions which belong to the state in accordance with the law. House sites and privately farmed plots of cropland and hilly land are also owned by collective entities. The state may, in the public interest, requisition land for use in accordance with the law. No organization or individual may appropriate, buy, sell or lease land or otherwise engage in the transfer of land by unlawful means.’ (Article 10 of the constitution)

31. Jun Jing, ‘Displacement, Resettlement, Rehabilitation, Reparation and Development – China Report’, Contributing paper, World Commission on Dams, 2000, p. 6.

32. This text followed a decree published in 1991 on the necessity to compensate relocatees in case of large and medium dams. (State Council of the PRC, 1991)

33. On 14 March 1997, the municipality of Chongqing was carved out of Sichuan Province as an independent entity. It is the fourth municipality governed directly by the Central government, after Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai. It covers an area of 82 403 km² and its total population is 30 million people.

34. Qi Ren ‘Is Developmental Resettlement Possible?’ in Dai Qing, ed., The River Dragon Has Come! The Three Gorges Dam and the Fate of China's Yangzi River and Its People. Armonk, New York: M.E Sharpe, 1998, pp. 50–62

35. Zhao Wanmin, Sanxia gongcheng yu renju huanjing jianshe, (The Research of Sustainable Human Settlements Construction in the Three Gorges Project), Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhu gongye chubanshe, 1999.

36. Solinger Dorothy J, ‘The Floating Population in the Cities: Chances for Assimilation?’, in Davis, Deborah S, ed., Urban Spaces in Contemporary China – The Potential For Autonomy and Community in Post-Mao China. London: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 113–39.

37. Doing fieldwork in Guizhou (Zigui former district seat), I met that old woman in the middle of ruins but who did not want to leave. Her first house has been destroyed by floods in 1991. Local cadres allocated her another piece of land to build her new house. It seems that another cadre wanted to give it to his family. After long discussion, she was granted another piece of land and eventually the second house was achieved in 1993. Then it appeared that she was below the 135 m line and would have to move once again. The problem is that the cadres told her that anything built after 1992 could not be compensated. No appeal against the decision was possible. It is stipulated by ‘the Regulations on migration due to the construction of the Three Gorges project on the Yangzi’ article 29. In order to force her to leave, the electricity was cut off; she had to use wood to heat up the place she lived in with her husband and go to the river to get water. In 2002, she was not there anymore; her house had been destroyed.

38. Wei yi, ‘Special Report: Major problems and hidden troubles in relocation of the Three Gorges project’, May 1999 (published online: www.probeinternational.org ). ‘Two officials in Yunyang village allegedly transformed 70 people into migrants and received almost US$ 10 000 for their services’. (‘Behind the dark curtain’ Patricia Adams Three Gorges Probe 5 November 2001).

39. In February 2000, Fengdu county's Director of the Land Bureau was sentenced to death for misappropriating and embezzling 15.5 million RMB of government funds for relocatees. (FBIS-CHI-2000-0523).

40. Sanxia gongcheng bao, January 2002.

41. The flat valleys account for 4.3% of the total area, hilly land for 21% and mountainous area 74%. Huang Jianmin, Changjiang sanxia dili, (Geography of the Yangzi Three Gorges), Chongqing: Chongqing chubanshe, 1999.

42. Yunyang xianzhi, (Records of Yunyang District), Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, .Yunyang is rated as a poor district under the state relief plan. The poverty benchmark is set at an annual income of just 635 RMB, far below the World Bank standard of 7.5 RMB per day (South China Morning Post, 18 November 2000 A8).

43. 8,27 RMB= 1US$

44. ‘Major Problems Found in Three Gorges Dam Resettlement Program’ An International Rivers Network and Human Rights in China - March 12, 1998. These figures were confirmed during interviews with local people in 2001 and 2002.

45. As an example of this type of discourse Li Boning “General Plan for Population Resettlement” in Dai Qing, The river Dragon, pp. 39–50.

46. According to ‘the Regulations’ article 25 (published in 2001), it is forbidden to cultivate lands with slopes of 25% or more. As most of the available land in the Three Gorges Area is hilly or mountainous, people have to be resettled outside of the municipality. Changjiang sanxia gong cheng jianshe yimin tiaoli, (the Regulations on migration due to the construction of the Three Gorges project on the Yangzi), State Council Authority, 2001.

47. Every year during spring and summer there are reports of landslides and on 1 May 2001, in Wulong county (Chongqing municipality), 74 people died. A nine-story building collapsed under the pressure of the slide (FBIS-CHI-2001-0503). In June, there have been some other reports of mudslides (5,000 m³) in Yunyang county (Chongqing municipality). (FBIS-CHI-2001-0621).

48. ‘Guanyu zuohao Sanxia gongcheng kuqu nongcun yimin waiqian anzhi gongzuo de ruogan yijian” A certain number of suggestion on how to do a good job in finding a suitable place for the rural migrants moving out of the Three Gorges reservoir area’ (6 November 1999).

49. Some interviews gave a less enthusiastic feeling. People in Chongming are very isolated as it is possible to commute to the island only by boat, and they are not numerous. The island itself is not well developed compared with the city. The Shanghai government has promised to build a bridge and to make an effort to promote infrastructure.

50. Michael Cernea developed a theoretical model to analyze impoverishment risks due to displacement: landlessness, joblessness, homelessness, marginalization, food insecurity, increased morbidity, loss of access to common property assets and community disarticulation. Risks and Reconstruction – Experiences of Resettlers and Refugees, pp. 11–55.

51. Varna C.V.J, WCPU – Green Power 2, 2nd International Conference, Accelerated Development of Hydro Power Resources in the 21 ^st Century, Proceedings, Yichang, 2000, pp. II–7. Summarizing the 1993 ‘Regulations on Resettlement for the construction of the TGDP on the Yangzi River’.

52. In the mid-1990s, some companies were given financial preferential treatment to invest in the Three Gorges reservoir area in order to boost the local economy. A Chengdu businessman told me that his company like some others (mainly Sichuanese ones) went to prospect. He decided to help a factory in Yunyang, as it was in his field. As a start, some workers were led off to make the factory more competitive and then he used the money given by the government to increase production. Today the factory is running well. However, the businessman's conclusion is that he neither earned money nor lost it. According to him, there is no economical solution for a poor area like Yunyang if the government is not investing directly a significant amount of money. (Interview in Shanghai 2003.)

53. Fieldwork in Zigui in 2001.

54. This is a danger highlighted by Cernea in Hydropower Dams, p. 14.

55. Qi Ren, ‘Discussing the issue of Development-Oriented Resettlement with Mr Li Boning’, in Dai Qing, Xue Weijia, Shuide Changjiang: Fazhanzhang de Zhongguo nengfou chengdan sanxia gongcheng (To whom Does the Yangzi River Belong: Can China in Its Development Undertake the Three Gorges Dam Project?), Hong Kong: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1996, pp. 53–71.

56. I could not find any reliable statistics on this specific point. This is the conclusion I reached after several interviews and some official reports I was given.

57. Fieldwork in Quyuan Zhen in October 2002.

58. Jun Jing, ‘Displacement, Resettlement, Rehabilitation, Reparation and Development – China Report’, p. 22. Jun Jing, ‘Villages dammed, villages repossessed: a memorial movement in northwest China’, American Ethonologist, vol. 26, no. 2, 1999, pp. 324–43.

59. One local cadre in a migration bureau in the Three Gorges area told me during an interview (in 2000) that he received no information to deal with resettlement issues and had no idea how to handle the situation. The directives he received were more ideological than practical.

60. Jun Jing, ‘Displacement, Resettlement, Rehabilitation, Reparation and Development – China Report’, p. 6.

61. As an example, in Zigui district, in the remote area of Shuitianba, the new building for local cadres looks like a ‘White House’ in miniature. All the new townships I have been to in the Three Gorges Area first built official buildings twice or more the size of the previous ones, using a large share of resettlement funds for their rêve de grandeur.

62. In the three districts that I have been doing intensive research on, I obtained copies of appeals to Beijing authorities. In another district, Yunyang (specifically the town of Gaoyang), it has been well advertised outside China (‘Three Gorges Dam petitioners abducted’ 23 March 2001, Wang Yusheng, ‘Migrants leaders languish in jail, one year on’ 12 March 2002, Kelly Haggart, both published on Probe international web site. ‘Three gorges petitioners held by police’ 21 March 2001, Jasper Becker, South China Morning Post).

63. See Ying Xing, Dahe yimin shangfang de gushi, (The Story of Petitions From the Migrants of the Big River ). Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2001.

64. Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, De la Justification – Les économies de la grandeur, Paris: Gallimard, 1991. Michèle Lamont and Laurent Thévenot (eds), Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology – Repertoires of Evaluation in France and the US. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

65. Jun Jing ‘Villages dammed, villages repossessed: a memorial movement in northwest China’, American Ethonologist, vol. 26, no. 2, 1999, pp. 324–43.

66. Main topic of the opening speech given by Lu Youmei at the WCPU conference in Varna, Varna C.V.J, WCPU – Green Power 2, 2nd International Conference, Accelerated Development of Hydro Power Resources in the 21st Century, Proceedings, Yichang, 2000.

67. A very interesting account of the dilemmas cadres in the field encounter has been written by a Chinese sociologist called Ying Xing. Ying Xing, Dahe yimin shangfang de gushi, (The Story of Petitions from the Migrants of the Big River), 2001.

68. Zhu Rongji during his inspection tour in 4–8 January 2001, stressed the following points: ‘He fully reaffirmed the results that have been achieved in the work of migration and resettlement in the area of the Three Gorges Reservoir. He indicated that this year, following the rise of the water-level, the second-phase migration work will enter its crucial stage (…) so we must ensure that the migration and resettlement can be carried out in a down-to-earth manner.’ (FBIS-CHI-2001-0108.)