(January 18, 2000) In a dramatic shift in policy, China’s central government recently announced plans to move 125,000 rural people out of the Three Gorges dam region – a departure from its original plan to resettle farmers locally by moving them uphill to new land or by providing them with new jobs in the vicinity of the dam.
The new directive reflects a growing urgency after months of confusion and disagreement following Premier Zhu Rongji’s public admission last year that the plan for resettling people locally 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in the area simply doesn’t exist and many of the area’s industrial enterprises need to be shut down because they are outdated, bankrupt, and incapable of creating new jobs for displaced people.
If construction of the massive Three Gorges dam continues as planned, it will flood close to two million people out of their homes. Gráinne Ryder of the Toronto-based Probe International argues that “this latest iteration of the resettlement plan won’t end the chaos along the Yangtze. The central government has an impossible task on its hands.”
The authorities are under pressure to move 550,000 by 2003, when the waters of the Yangtze are scheduled to begin rising and the dam’s first 14 turbines to start operating. China’s Xinhua News Agency reports that 178,000 people have already been resettled, but critics estimate the number is fewer than 100,000.
Three Gorges Probe, January 18, 2000
For more information, see Three Gorges Probe
Contact: PATRICIA ADAMS, Executive Director, Probe International, and Publisher of Three Gorges Probe Internet News Service, (416) 964 9223 ext. 227, or e-mail PatriciaAdams@nextcity.com
GRÁINNE RYDER, Policy Director, Probe International, (416) 964 9223 ext. 228, or email GrainneRyder@nextcity.com
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