Economist.com China's Three Gorges' project
Dam shame Jul 4th 2002 | FENGJIE COUNTY >From The Economist print edition What happens to the villagers who dare to protest IN THE village of Yaowan on the northern bank of the Yangtze River, some residents are dreading the imminent arrival of the demolition teams that will flatten their settlement and force its occupants to move elsewhere. Yaowan is one of hundreds of villages and dozens of towns that will be flooded after the world's biggest hydroelectric dam blocks the Yangtze at the bottom of the scenic Three Gorges in June next year. Many in the reservoir area, 600km (375 miles) long, complain that the government's resettlement programme is unfair and plagued by corruption. Yaowan's citizens are particularly angry. In late May, hundreds of Yaowan's inhabitants gathered to protest against what they say is the government's failure to compensate them adequately for the loss of their land and houses. They blocked traffic attempting to pass through the village, which lies on a main road running through Fengjie County at the entrance to the gorges. Elderly villagers sat on rocks placed in the middle of the road, until the authorities lost patience. The government is fearful of unrest that could cast more doubt over the controversial project and complicate the task of relocating more than 1.2m people, or perhaps as many as 2m according to some Chinese experts. Criticism of the project is rarely allowed to appear in China's state-controlled media. But in 1999 a Chinese academic wrote in a leading journal that the resettlement of reservoir-area inhabitants could become "an explosive social problem, a source of constant social instability in our country for the first half of the next century." It already is a huge social problem. A scarcity of arable land means many of those resettled will have to move far from their homes. The finance ministry has recommended relocating them to sparsely populated areas such as Tibet and Xinjiang, which will fuel anti-Chinese sentiment among ethnic minorities in those areas. Compensation payments are woefully inadequate and much of the little that is available is drained away by corruption. The government admitted two years ago that some $58m of resettlement money, out of $2.1 billion then allocated, had been misappropriated. But the government does not want evacuees airing their grievances in public. Early last year, the authorities arrested four farmers in Yunyang, in the next county upriver from Fengjie, who had complained to foreign journalists about corruption among officials in charge of resettlement. The farmers were accused of leaking state secrets. In Yaowan village, hundreds of police and paramilitary troops were deployed to stop the protests. Participants say the protests were peaceful. Officials say some villagers violently resisted attempts to disperse them. The police detained more than a dozen people, of whom villagers say nine remain in custody. They say the police are still looking for organisers. "We don't dare to speak out," says one villager. "If we do, we'll be arrested." Protests such as those in Yaowan could become more frequent in the coming months as the resettlement process moves into high gear. Between the start of the Three Gorges dam construction in 1993 and the end of last year, 458,000 people were moved. This year alone, another 148,000 will have to relocate. The aim is to complete the process by the end of the year, including the demolition of buildings beneath the reservoir's initial water level. But even though demolition teams have already reduced much of the riparian settlement between the dam site and Chongqing, at the head of the reservoir-to-be, there is much work to be done. The government tried to create a sense of urgency in January by organising television coverage of the dynamiting of Fengjie County's government headquarters in Yongan and a disused power station. But much of Yongan is still standing. Its narrow streets, known as a haunt of some the nation's most famous classical poets, still teem with life. Its decades-old rubbish tips have yet to be moved, if they ever will be. A Chinese newspaper said in a forthright report in February that the reservoir, filled with refuse, could breed disease. Much of the new county seat, high above the river, is still a building site, though government and Communist Party organs have already occupied their lavish new offices and a few senior officials have moved into luxury five-bedroom apartments overlooking the river-suspiciously comfortable given that Fengjie is relatively poor. Most of Fengjie's urban residents will end up with better housing. But the compensation scheme provides free housing only up to the same size as residents' cramped homes. Since most of the new accommodation is bigger, residents have to pay premium prices for the additional floor space. "Ordinary people have to spend a lifetime's savings for a new place," says the manager of a Fengjie removal company. But the dam-builders are not holding back. On July 1st, the Chinese Communist Party's 81st birthday, the last coffer-dam protecting the dam itself from the full might of the Yangtze river was blown up, two months ahead of schedule. One of the dam's most vocal critics, Dai Qing, who once worked on a leading state newspaper, says that in spite of the project's many drawbacks, many officials see it as a way of lining their pockets. She laments that some former officials have already acquired enough money to move abroad, leaving the dam and its problems for others to deal with. Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2002. All rights reserved.
