January 18, 2000

In a desperate attempt to keep pace with construction of the Three Gorges dam, which will flood close to two million people out of their homes, China’s central government recently announced plans to move 125,000 rural people out of the project area.

The directive, which came from the State Council’s Three Gorges resettlement bureau, headed by Premier Zhu Rongji, is a departure from the original plan (kaifashi yimin) to resettle farmers locally by moving them uphill to new land or by providing them with new jobs in the area. Announced in People’s Daily last November, the directive comes after months of confusion and disagreement over resettlement, following Premier Zhu’s public criticism of the official plans and a ban on reclamation of steep hillsides in the Three Gorges region.

The State Council’s directive is an acknowledgement that there isn’t enough local land for Three Gorges evacuees and that many will have to be moved to more distant parts of the country. Starting this year, Sichuan, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Guangdong provinces are to accept 7,000 people each. Shanghai and Fujian are to each accept 5,500 people; Hunan, Anhui, and Jiangxi provinces will each receive 5,000 people; and another 55,000 people are to be moved to several counties in Hubei province.

This shift in policy from local to distant resettlement comes as an embarrassment to the man in charge of resettlement, Li Boning, who has long insisted that there would be no need to move people far away because the Three Gorges area could accommodate a large resettled population. For years, China’s official media have given the impression that resettlement was proceeding smoothly, and that people who had already moved were happy and prosperous in their new homes.

But last April, Premier Zhu could no longer ignore evidence to the contrary. Following reports of corruption, mismanagement, and anger among many of those to be moved, Premier Zhu was forced to publicly admit that the official plan for resettling people locally – or in the vicinity of their original homes – was impossible. Unused land in the area simply doesn’t exist and many of the area’s industrial enterprises need to be shut down because they are outdated, bankrupt, and incapable of creating new jobs for displaced people.

Officials are under pressure to move 550,000 people by 2003, when the waters of the Yangtze are scheduled to begin rising and the dam’s first 14 turbines to start operating. The state-owned Three Gorges dam corporation is counting on electricity sales starting in 2003 to fund the final phase of construction.

Three Gorges Probe welcomes submissions. However, it is not a forum for political debate. Rather, Three Gorges Probe is dedicated to covering the scientific, technical, economic, social, and environmental ramifications of completing the Three Gorges Project, as well as the alternatives to the dam.

Publisher: Patricia Adams Executive Editor: Mu Lan ISSN 1481-0913