(December 28, 2005) With cracks to fill and toxins to remove before the water rises next year, the people of the Yangtze can only hope no one cuts any fatal corners, John Gittings writes.

Fuling, China: The road up the hillside overlooking the Yangtze river at Fuling is a broad sheet of sticky mud. Battered trucks piled with earth and rock slither down, passing a file of blue-smocked workers with tools on their shoulders. The great rush is on to meet next year’s June deadline when the vast reservoir of the Three Gorges Dam, 300 miles downstream from Fuling, begins to fill. Recently discovered cracks in the dam, claimed to be harmless but causing obvious concern, must be plugged. Thousands of tonnes of rubbish and toxic waste must be removed from the abandoned factories, towns and villages which will be submerged. Here in Fuling accommodation is being built for hundreds of displaced families in a barrack-like block at the top of the hill. The slogan on the hoardings conveys the sense of urgency: “Work hard and don’t keep the migrants waiting: Struggle for 18 months to give them a new home!” The “migrants” have already lost their homes on the waterfront, where a huge embankment is being built to protect the rest of the town. “Some have rented places to live in,” an official casually explains. “Others are staying with relatives in the suburbs.” Here as elsewhere the timetable has slipped: many displaced families have sought temporary homes in Chongqing, 80 miles upstream. Some do better than others. In Qingxi, a few miles downstream from Fuling, the villagers of Pingyuan have moved just up the hill to land they already farmed. A red placard in the fields below marks the high-water mark of the reservoir: now they will rely on a fish farm and piggery built with state loans. Pingyuan is a model resettlement with a primary school and old people’s home to serve the surrounding villages, visited by the prime minister, Zhu Rongji, at the last Chinese New Year. “We have bigger houses and running water and we’ll soon have the telephone,” said Zhang Guomin, 65. “Our income is three times more than from farming. How can we not be happy?”

The Guardian, December 28, 2005