(May 1, 2002) Villagers displaced eight yeas ago for the Xiaolangdi dam on the Yellow River are suing local officials over compensation they have yet to receive.

(Excerpt)

Xiang Yuan, China — Lu She Zhong, a 55-year-old village leader in this cluster of unfinished red brick houses, is one of the few residents who still wears a blue Mao suit. But it isn’t out of affection for the Communist Party.

“I can’t afford any new clothes,” Lu said in this tiny village of some 300 families in central Henan province. “This is a thieving government that’s taken away our entire life.”

Eight years ago, residents here lived in Guan Yang, a village 40 miles to the east. They moved to Xiang Yuan after their homes were appropriated by local authorities to make way for the giant Xiao Langdi dam on the Yellow River — China’s second-largest water management project after the mammoth Three Gorges dam in neighboring Hubei province. At the time, government planners said Xiao Langdi would be a testament to China’s progress, bringing water and electricity to the country’s impoverished interior regions.

But villagers say the dam is yet another monument to the miscalculations and injustices they lay at the feet of their rulers.

San Francisco Chronicle, May 1, 2002