2.4 Social: Are the Social and Human Impacts of the Three Gorges Dam Positive?
As resettlement is “a totalizing experience in its capacity to impact virtually every domain of individual and community life” (Oliver-Smith, 2001, p.19). People being displaced are cut off from their roots, their own communities, and social supporting networks, often with short notice, no chance to react and no place to appeal; embezzlement of relocation funds by the local officials; lack of surveillance mechanism to monitor local officials’ wrong doing regarding the relocation issues; and unanticipated conditions arise due to the gap between planning and the mission in practice (Stavropoulou, 1998;Webber, 2011). In such circumstances, there is high possibility of serious human rights violations, both before and even long after the displacement, sadly reminiscent of those miserable cases of relocations during 1950s to 1970s in China (Stavropoulou, 1994&1998). Involuntary resettlement is generally a by-product of dam constructions processes and schedules, as an economic externality. And they have been too often treated as by-products as well by the developers who defined their projects only in technological terms, not humanitarian terms when designing and delivering settlement programs (Scudder, 1973&2005). As de Wet (1999, p.117) points out, “Planners of involuntary components of projects treated them is an unfortunate side-effect of the main (usually infrastructure) project.” It is then not surprising that the outcomes of forced relocation induced by large dams have not been improved. The resettlement problems that displaced people often face are landlessness, joblessness, homelessness, marginalization, increased morbidity, food insecurity, loss of access to common property, and social disarticulation ― a well-known impoverishment risks and reconstruction model developed by Michael Cernea (1990) (Cernea & McDowell, 2000). Migration is always considered as “an extremely varied and complex manifestation and component of equally complex economic, social, cultural, demographic, and political processes operating at the local, regional, national, and international levels” (Castles & Miller, 1993, quoted in Lonergan, 1998, p.2). Moreover, the “responses and motivations for acceptance or resistance are as complex and diverse, spanning the spectrum from purely material considerations to the most deeply felt ideological beliefs and concerns” (Oliver-Smith, 2001, p.19). The government and companies involved tend to regard resettlement as just another tedious cost, so the tendency is to restrict the expenses that would otherwise have benefitted those most in need (de Wet, 2001). In a badly planned or unplanned resettlement, the probability of resettlement risks is fairly high (Cernea, 2000; Oliver-Smith, 2010). The aim of successful resettlement is to prevent impoverishment, to restore the livings of the displaced and most importantly, to share the project benefits with the displaced people, which is a lofty goal hard to be achieved (Jing, 1999). The displaced should be provided for over and above what was taken from them in order to be promptly better off after their relocation. ‘No worse off’ to be means immobilism, so cannot be referred to as ‘development’ (Nayak, 2000). In practice, however, the basic principle of ‘no worse off’ is hardly achieved even if ‘no worse off’ would be much better than the historic performances of resettlement in China (ibid).
2.4.1 Involuntary Displacement and Difficulty of Resettlement
Figure 2-3: Diagram of the Three Gorges Project inundation area (Source: CTGPC)
It is incontestable that in the Chinese government’s commitments to the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, they had no major problem in violating human rights in exchange for an epistemology of outcome in making China a global player in the economic market. In excess of a million people have had to be relocated, but their sacrifice was regarded as a personal and community sacrifice for the greater good. To emphasize the seriousness of these dislocations, I have substituted the official term ‘reservoir resettlers’ for the term ‘reservoir refugees’. To my mind, these are really people who have been disconnected from their homes, their land and culture, and sometime from their families, so the term ‘reservoir refugees’ captures these negative subtleties better than he official nomenclature.
2.4.2 Dislocated Population and Submergence
There is no question that resettlement of more than a million people is an enormous job for many reasons. According to a survey conducted by the Changjiang Water Resources Commission (CWRC), the completion of the Three Gorges Project Reservoir Impoundment requested that 632 square kilometers of land to be inundated, including another 273 square kilometers of farmland (dry land, paddy and vegetable fields) and citrus land (CTGPC, 2006). There was also the productive land lost after construction for roads, electricity and communications transmission lines, and other infrastructure support edifices. It is also reported that 34.8 million square meters of houses, 7.2 million square meters of industrial factories were also below the inundation line, affecting habitats of 847,500 people and 1549 industrial business (Tan & Yao, 2006; CTGPC, 2006). According to the Chinese official figures by the end of 2009, the year in which the Three Gorges Project was completed, a total 1.27 million people had been relocated. Those 1.27 million people from 21 countries or municipal districts, 365 townships and 1680 villages were presumably relocated to 11 designated provinces or municipalities. Among those, 41 percent of them were from rural areas and 59 percent were urban registered citizens.
Reports from the government claim that 80 percent of the affected rural oustees were specifically relocated to up-slope relocation, while 20 percent were sent to distant areas (CTGPC, 2006). Another 60 percent of rural reservoir oustees have maintained their agricultural vocation and 40 percent have entered into employment in a variety of enterprises, whereas the urban displaced population retains their pattern of social status unchanged (CTGPC, 2006; U.S. Embassy (Beijing) online). Nevertheless, in the Three Gorges Reservoir area, the present population density is as high as 302 persons per square kilometer. This is more than twice the average elsewhere in China (Duan & Steil, 2003; Heggelund, 2006). Some independent assessments by Jackson and Sleigh (2000), and later, by Dai (1998) suggested that the actual number of population dislocation of 2 million in this case is a more faithful reflection of reality, given the case scenario at hand (Cernea & McDowell, 2000; WCD, 2000; Stojanov & Novosak, 2006). A fairly accurate estimate of figure of oustees is hard to get partly because the proponents and the opponents of the TGDP were inclined to reduce or exaggerate the number of the displaced for their own vested interest or political purposes (Li et al., 2001). Either way, the relocation and resettlement of the Three Gorges Reservoir ousters represents a world record both in scale and in difficulty.
Figure 2-4: Life in 2001 in the Chinese city of Badong, which was being demolished in preparation for flooding by the Three Gorges Dam Reservoir. (Source: Richard Jones. SINOPIX-REA)
2.4.3 Resettlement History and Consequences in China
This issue of the forced–resettlement related to the Three Gorges Project is particularly important for China. Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, more than 86,000 dams have been built, and every large dam/reservoir has led to the relocation of local people within densely populated areas of towns and villages along the major rivers. On some reports it is estimated that at least 45 million people have been displaced in China since 1949 because of the construction of dams (Fruggle, et al. 2000; Stojanov & Novosak, 2006; McCully, 2001; Tan & Yao, 2006). Despite the provision of government aid of a US $300 (1,900 million Yuan)rehabilitation program in 1986 at 46 resettlement areas with 5 million reservoir resettlers, some reports including one by the Ministry of Water Resources in 1990, estimate that at least 50 to 70 percent of the existing 10.2 million[1] forced displaced population associated with the water projects in the past, i.e. nearly 5 to 7 million people, were still living below the official poverty line 30 years after the relocation (Jing, 1999; Topping, 1998; Li et al., 2001; McCully, 2001; Chetham, 2002).
During the Mao’s era, the resettlement policies that the Chinese government adopted was, as I mentioned earlier, a one-time payment of compensation for peasants and others to compensate for their loss of property. Before1980s, majority of the displaced people were poor farmers living in small and remote villages (Jing, 1999). There was no such thing called ‘consultation’ with those farmers during that era and dislocation was simply administrative order to obey and follow. Their houses and farmlands were inundated or simply destroyed often without providing adequate warning or with adequate compensation (Tian & Lin, 1986; Jing, 1999; Li et al., 2001). During the process of displacement and resettlement, many of these ‘reservoir refugees’ suffered from the bitter cold, due to the lack of clothing or basic shelter, and acute malnutrition due to severe food shortages (ibid). As a result, the majority of displaced peasants became significantly poorer than before they were moved (Jing, 1999). For example, vast displacement caused by dams/reservoirs such as Sanmenxia and Danjiangkou as I mentioned before resulted in the impoverishment of those forced displaced, along with an increase of political and social riots within the resettlement areas, before and throughout the 1970s (ibid).
Learning some hard lessons from the poor performance of resettlement in the past and the pressure of fulfilling the international standard of humanitarian expectations as it related to the involuntary dislocation of huge populations, the one-time compensation policy adopted in Mao’s era has been replaced with the policy of ‘development-orientated resettlement’. The goal of development-orientated resettlement was to improve the living standards of the displaced, by providing employment and improved living conditions after being relocated (World Bank, 2000; Picciotto et al., 2001). Originally introduced by the World Bank, which aimed to integrate the outcomes of resettlement with the development of the economy, those who were forcibly displaced were regarded as an opportunity for economic development, which would improve their livelihoods and raise the environmental quality to be enjoyed by these populations after relocation (Cernea, 1997). This model has been successfully implemented in a few reservoir projects. Projects such as Shuikou and Xiaolangdi, for example, are two representatives. These successful projects have one thing in common: compliance with World Bank policies since they were funded by the World Bank (World Bank, 1994; Jing, 1999; de Wet, 2001). One scheme stood out from other resettlement schemes seems to be the high resettlement budgets for the Shuikou and Xiaolangdi dam compensation. Jing (1999, p.16) states that “the Xiaolangdi Project has the highest resettlement budget per person of any project in China. Moreover, a separate (World) Bank credit was created, distinct from the dam project and loan, to ensure a high level of attention, staff inputs, and budgetary resources.” For example, about average US $ 24,000 per family was available for resettlement in the Xiaolangdi compensation case (de Wet, 2001). This figure was about 15 times the annual income of a non-urban family.
However, a couple of critics are not impressed by those successes. Dai Qing assesses that there are no cases of successful implementation of involuntary resettlement in China (Dai, 1998). Sophia Woodman (2000) thinks that the resettlement practice in China is more about controlling over access to or release of information than of good practice and therefore actual information and facts of the practice of resettlement. This being so, it is clear that in China it is hard to assess compensatory schemes due to the political sensitivity of any reservoir displacement programs, which left people mute to any mention of the humanitarian costs associated with hydropower development. Even though improvement in the policies and procedures have been seen in the past decades, according to these sources, it seems clear that “the reasons for the failure of resettlement projects seem generic, the reasons for success seem to be more case-specific” (de Wet, 2001, p.4644).
2.4.4 Resettlement Strategies and Process
Three major approaches have been employed for the rural resettlement during the period of construction and after:
1. Settling oustees to a nearby higher ground without moving them far away;
2. Allowing and encouraging oustees to choose living with relatives elsewhere;
3. Moving oustees out of the reservoir area completely to other designated provinces or municipalities, such as the east coast and middle and downstream areas of the Yangtze River basin, which would share some benefits brought by the services provided by the Three Gorges Project: such as flood prevention, electricity generation and navigation (Tan et al., 2005).
The whole resettlement process was completed in four stages:
1993-1997, displace the population living in area under 90 meters above the sea level
1998-2003, up to 135 meters
2004-2006, up to 156 meters
2007-2009, up to 175 meters
Figure 2-5: Origin counties and 11 destination provinces/municipalities, 2000 – 2002
(Source: Asia-Pacific Population Journal, September 2003)
2.4.5 Primary Problems of Resettlement Program
Even though China has improved its resettlement performance since the 1980s, the ongoing problems that have emerged in the process of the TGP resettlement has made manifestly clear that the task of resettlement of 1.3 million people is fraught with difficulties. In aggregate terms, development-induced displacement often affects most those who are vulnerable and deprived, along with marginalized groups who are economically, politically, socially and legally ignored and discriminated in the population (WCD, 2000; de Wet, 2001). It is now incontestable that the displaced people from their traditional habitat suffer substantial hardship. Apart from bearing psychological costs, certain types of intangible assets or socio-cultural losses which cannot be quantified in monetary terms, or identified as a ‘loss’ were not compensated in any kind (Cernea, 2003). These included family relationships, kinship networks, and employment opportunities (Cernea, 2003 & 2005). What is clear from the established history of accumulated evidence related to relocation programs in China is that except in very rare cases, forced displacement has always resulted in, what Michael Cernea refers as ‘a spiral of impoverishments’ (Kothari, 1996; Saxena, 2008, p.354);
2.4.5.1 Inadequate Preparation
De Wet (2001) provides two broad approaches to explain why resettlement so often goes wrong. There are “inadequate inputs” and “inherent complexity” approaches, which I think fit the Three Gorges Dam Project case perfectly (de wet, 2001, p.4642). The “appropriate inputs” such as “national legal frameworks and policies, political will, funding, pre-displacement research, careful implementation and monitoring” as de Wet (2001, p.4638) pointed out are lacking in the Three Gorges Dam resettlement. On the other hand, moving and finding resettlement places for at least 1.3 million people in any nations requires an extremely complex mobilization, on the basis of the number alone. He argues that the interrelationship among “cultural, social, environmental, economic, institutional and political” is an “inherent complexity,” for all those factors are “taking place in the context of imposed space change and of local level responses and initiatives” (de Wet, 2006, p.190; quoted in Oliver-Smith, 2010, p.26), occurring “simultaneously in an interlinked and mutually influencing process of transformation” and being affected by “external sources of power, as well as the initiatives of local actors”, making the resettlement process “unpredictable and irrational” (Oliver-Smith, 2010, p.26)
Given the nature of “inherent complexity”, the Chinese government’s input on resettlement design and implementation was also inadequate. The specific policies tailored for the Three Gorges Dam resettlement was not adequate and had led to difficulties in implementing resettlement and rehabilitation schemes. There were no clear and transparent criteria for relocation, for instance. The inconsistency of resettlement plans during the whole course of relocation was highly problematic and morally tenuous. Due to the lack of accurate environmental impact assessment, the initial resettlement plan of moving migrants upwards had to be compromised by moving some to remote areas, in order to ease the pressure on land acquisition simply because there was not enough suitably fertile fields for those displaced farmers, as well as no suitable and sustainable employment opportunities for those farmers-turning-into workers. Such a notion that monetary or material compensation was enough institutionally prevailed, and the suitable social impact assessment was no place to be found, which led to many conflicts between migrants and their host.
The TGDP simultaneously imposes a vast array of “administrative, institutional, financial and personnel demands – not to mention the seemingly inevitable series of unintended and unanticipated problem outcomes which emerge at both national and local levels” (de Wet, 2001, p.4638). The people involved have had to deal with these conflicting tensions virtually simultaneously, and would have had even worse experiences when confronting those officials who were in charge of the implementation of resettlement plans and distribution of resettlement funds. In many cases these officials have simply been unable to handle the conflicting and seemingly intractable demands of the situation, and the result has been an irreconcilable crisis at many levels (de Wet, 2001)
Last but not least, another evidence of lacking preparation is not knowing even the most basic data, such as the precise numbers of people displaced by the Three Gorges Dam because, according to the World Bank (2000), the relatively accurate number of people to be displaced and the patterns of their social, economic and demographic composition helps to design suitable resettlement policies and schemes (World Bank, 2001).
2.4.5.2 Lack of Participation
However, in terms of the resettlement practice in the TGDP, informed consent and public participation is found to be either absent or operated as rubber-stamps. Full information disclosure is strictly limited to a small powerful group of government authorities at central, provincial and local level. Decision-making may involve relevant state agencies and engineering companies such as dam engineers and administrators, domestic and international financial institutions or investment banks (Alberts et al., 2004). Consulting service may be provided by Chinese experts in a relevant field associated with the dam-building, such as professionals expertized on engineering, finance, meteorology, archaeology and environment. However, one group left out of this privileged decision-making loop is the group representing the impacted farmers and urban dwellers who must be relocated as the reservoir behind the dam fills to its maximum height (ibid). Resettlers therefore have been given inadequate right of participation and options in the process of their displacement and resettlement.
2.4.5.3 Inadequate Compensation and Funds
The displaced are frequently subjected to the mercy of state authorities and rigid administrative processes (Nayak, 2000). Designation of compensation standards and its distribution are the showcase of this subjugation. The basic principle of compensation is equity of value, meaning that the loss of property for whatever they are can be converted to cash, goods, other properties, and some material benefits or services. The power of the fixation of exchange value between the loss and the compensation is held by the administrative authority (ibid). However, in practice, compensation as an administratively restorative instrument and is “vastly impaired by its extreme vulnerability to administrative distortion, twisting, subtraction” (Cernea, 2003, p.12). This being so, such administrative misbehave leads to different forms of under-compensation, which include undercounting of assets, arbitrary valuation of assets, non-recognition of intangible losses, late payment-led losses of compensation, diversion of compensation money by officials, and purchase losses due to the change of asset prices in market (Koeing & Diarra, 2000;Baxi, 2001; Cernea, 2003; Downing & Garcia-Downing, 2009). It would not be an exaggeration to say that very few resettlement programs (as I singled out above) in China have adequately, if at all, compensated all those who are displaced.
Shortage of funding due to the underestimation of resettlement costs is one of the major problems in the implementation of internal displacement, exacerbating the problems with limited or absent political commitment and administrative accountability, budget constraints, and inflexible distributional procedures (WCD, 2000; Cernea, 2003&2005). A maximum cost of US $40 billion (195 billion Yuan) is assigned for resettlement of 1.3 million Chinese people (Wang, 1996; Stein, 1998). First, evidence shows undeniably that the purchasing power of cash equivalent compensation provided to relocatees fall far short to replace their multiple loss of assets such as land, property and a house in a new setting at levels that provide equal or improved income (even if all material losses were compensated at replacement market value (Baxi, 2001; Cercea, 2003), rendering the displaced population further powerless (WCD overview, 2001). As a result, some oustees had to borrow money from relatives or friends to fill the gap between the compensation they got and the cost of building a new house which is the essence of resettlement with development.
Second, even inadequate compensation does not cover all the project-impacted persons whose land, houses, property, employment or livelihood are affected by the dam construction. In fact, only displaced persons can classify as a member of the “directly affected population,” which makes them eligible to receive various types of compensation and funds benefits (Tan et al., 2003). The phrase “productive resettlement population” refers to “persons who will lose their farmland or other production resources and thus need to be provided with land or a suitable means of production to restore agricultural production or job opportunities for livelihood and production reconstruction” (Tan et al., 2003, p.9-10). According to Three Gorges Project Construction Committee (TGPCC, 2000), for example, the average cash compensation provided to those productive population was 30,000 Yuan (US $ 4300 in 2003). Another group of displaced persons was called “affiliated migrant family members” such as elderly and children who are no longer treated as “productive resettlement population” were only to receive fractions of the full compensation allocated to the group of “directly affected population” (Jing ,1999; Tan et al., 2003). It is very hard to quantify a standard compensation because of the regional differences and the time of being relocated. Furthermore, the ‘floating population’ in the Three Gorges Reservoir area (account for 10 to 30 percent of urban dwellers) whose household registration in other places were not regarded as a “directly affected population” and therefore no housing or land compensation or government arranged employment opportunities were provided (REG, 1988;Zmolek, 1992; Tan et al., 2003). Moreover, millions of people living downstream from dams — particularly those making a living out of local common resources such as floodplain or fisheries — have also suffered badly from the adverse impacts on their livelihoods and their future means of productivity based on natural resources, has been compromised. Unfortunately, they are not legitimately labeled as directly or an indirectly affected population and therefore are not eligible for compensation of any kind (WCD Overview, 2001). Moreover, Scudder (1996) suggests that the host community should be included into the scheme of compensation because the host population has to share the common resources with those resettlers who are eligible to share the project benefits while the host groups are not.
Third, the determination of market value of assets is practically arbitrary and subjective, which often results in inappropriate valuation and undervaluation of assets. Rarely are people consulted, or invited to negotiate. For example, in the case of the evaluation of housing, miscalculations deliberately occurred on calculating the floor areas and the structures areas. Besides, administrative and documentation errors have also been rife (Tan et al., 2003). Furthermore, the power of valuation, instead of being carried out by independent or professional assessors, often rests on the local compensating authorities, who are also interested parties in the resettlement transactions involved in compensation and acquisition (Cernea, 2003; Saxena, 2008). Moreover, people are rarely consulted regarding the compensation or benefits they would like or have the bargaining capacity to negotiate compensation for deprivations inflicted upon them (Nayak, 2000; Cernea, 2003).
Fourth, inequitable distribution of compensation and inconsistency of compensation implementation among of migrant households were another reason causing the resettlement problems. The calculation of compensation was based on the different household registration status of each household, house location, house design and building materials (Tan et al., 2003). This being so, the rural migrants received a much lower compensation than their urban counterparts because the former’s houses are normally locate in relatively remote poor region with primitive building materials and design (Tan et al., 2003). Another problem caused by the constant and various adjustments during the resettlement practice. Since the displaced populations are resettled according to the different stages of dam construction, each time, the variation of compensation is perceived by the reservoir migrants as the disparity.
Fifth, one important reason contribute to the inadequate compensation is the subtraction of the compensation money by local corrupt officials before it reaches those legally entitled (Cernea, 2003; de Wet, 2006). The management of relocation funds has been criticized by some as ‘lackadaisical’ and involves too many local administrative agencies and the way of cooperation among them was complex, time consuming and often bureaucratic. For example, the local resettlement authorities and banks are responsible for distributing the resettlement funds specifically under their aegis; land administration and taxation agencies are in charge of the requisition of land and the collection of taxes (Jing, 1999). No agency set up specifically to provide liaison and monitor the whole resettlement process. Some specific problems were directly associated with this inadequate cooperation. First, the funds were spent on too many projects like scattering pepper and salt without concentration. Second, the resettlement funds are embezzled by local officials to be used on profitable projects (ibid). Since local governments were the ones in charge of allocating the fund, they were more interested in industrial enterprises which can boost the local economic or at least make the GDP looking good instead of constructed some infrastructures.
And lastly, the most common aspect of omission of compensation is un-recognition of nonphysical, or intangible losses such as access to markets, common resources and social networks (Fisher, 1995; Oliver-Smith, 2001). The loss of local culture, societal status and identity also presents of the loss of wealth, which is more psychological in nature than the loss of income or physical belongings (Cernea, 2003). Those harms are intangible losses and difficult to measure (e.g. Mental health impairment due to the loss of social networks), or cannot be evaluated in a monetary term as the physical marketable assets subject to compensation. These intangible losses are often excluded from compensation. Further, for those things whose value is hard to be determined appropriately would normally be compensated inappropriately (Nayak, 2000; Cernea, 2003).
2.4.5.4 Shortage of Land and Inferior Quality
Land is an essential for agricultural production and has been the fundamental form of security of the livelihoods or even the only survival support dependent by Chinese farmers. For the majority of displaced farmers, a plot of alternative land holding no less in size than the average block for the host people was provided by the government to each household in the resettlement arrangement to restore and maintain their livelihoods. The process of distribution involved breaking down the original land allotment in any particular village and redistributing it among host and displaced households (Tan et al., 2003). The distribution strategy thus meant that there were slight readjustments of the original land relationship with the host households by allocating to the newly displaced a part of the land collected from the host farmers (ibid).
Land readjustment and reallocation has become increasingly difficult because land is scarce in most regions, especially in economically developed areas. Commandeering farmland from host communities in the recipient region depends upon mediated compromised solutions which are accepted by both the resettlers and host communities, whose 30-year land-use rights are secured by the country under 1998’s Land Management Law (State Council, 2004). Several factors contributed to unfavorable economic prospects by those displaced farmers who have to face in terms of distribution of land in resettlement communities.
First, the initial resettlement plan emphasized simply an upward migration, opening up the virgin land at higher elevations for those displaced within the Three Gorges Project area. Minimally distant relocations such as this made it less socially and economically provocative for displaced households who would otherwise have had to move far from their familiar home environment. One of the problems with this well-intentioned strategy was that the population carrying capacity of land (most locate on slopes and ridges) was from the outset of relocation extremely low. As I mentioned before, recent studies showed that the average population density in the Three Gorges area is almost twice the national average (Duan & Steil, 2003; Heggelund, 2006). Many of the local farmers are working land on steep inclines and are awkwardly positioned, with far less usable land than they need to sustain a decent livelihood (Heggelund, 2006). Moreover, the top soils in these slopes and hills were very thin and infertile and often subject to soil erosion caused by floods, winds or droughts, which imposed serious problems on the crop yield (Stein, 1998). Further, watering the uphill soil is difficult and requires more input from the irrigation facilities. When attention is paid to all the above mentioned problems combines together, it was unsurprising that the agricultural output has been much lower than that of in flood plains that displaced farmers used to work on and now were submerged.
Second, in the Three Gorges area, only 15,000 hectares of new land have been reclaimed against 30,000 hectares to be submerged (Jing, 1999). However, in practice, it took approximately five times the amount of submerged fertile land to support the same number of people who used to farm on a much more fertile land, according to the researchers from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Chetham, 2002). For example, land shortage was especially severe in the five counties Wushan, Fengjie, Yunyang, Kaixian and Zhongxian in Chongqing (Heggelund, 2006). The total of inundated farmland was 14,330 hectares, whereas the land available for resettling was approximately 223,000 outees from above five counties, with only 8870 hectares available (ibid). This means that at least one third of them could not be resettled locally because of land deficiency, given they were compensated roughly the same amount of land (Jing, 1999; Tan et al., 2003; Tan & Yao, 2006). This land shortage got worse after a massive floods hit middle and lowers part of the Yangtze River in 1998, the Chinese government began to acknowledge the serious environmental problems in the Yangtze valley mainly caused by reclamation and deforestation (Du & Yan, 1999). Stricter rules prohibiting deforestation and the cultivating terraced land on slopes of over 25 degrees were then instituted and more rigorously enforced (Du & Yan, 1999; Chetham, 2002). Consequently, there was never sufficiently suitable land available to support the large number of people to be resettled and some had to be relocated elsewhere instead of nearby. Unfortunately, the land provided in some receiving locations was also inadequate for displacees to make productive use of it compared to pre-relocation levels, as the land was more often than not, in poor quality easily subjecting to geological changes such as floods and drought, and the absence of infrastructural and input support only make the situation worse (Tan et al., 2003; Saxena, 2008)
Third, adjusting and redistributing land became increasingly difficult than ever. One reason is that National Land Administration Law (revised in 2004) has guaranteed Chinese farmers’ 30-year land-use tenure rights. Local government involved with the host communities, however, did not have rights to adjust and relocate farmland from host households to resettlers (State Council, 2004). In addition, the State Council exempted and reduced agriculture tax in 2006 in order to enhance Chinese farmers’ engagement in agricultural production (Jing, 1999). In rural China, land is the most basic component of the livelihoods for farmers because there is still no other social security system applied to them as it does to urban citizens. Consequently, finding enough suitable land for displaced farmers became progressively more difficult. For example, in the massive distant resettlement which occurred in 2001-2002, large scale readjusting of land was unavoidable and became very controversial and problematic (ibid). Compensation for the host farmers involved at the time has in some cases never been resolved adequately and still remains a sensitive issue. Given that these are peasants whose families have been engaging in agriculture securely for thousands of years. Moreover, it is claimed by some researchers that a number of local host farmers suffer more from the process of resettlement than the resettlers do (Qiu et al., 2000; Heggelund, 2006) due to the reason that the state resettlement policy ensured resettlers a certain size of farmland as compensation for their losses, while the host households had to make sacrifice to hand over an portion of their land to the resettlers without appropriate compensation or benefit sharing as those resettlers do (ibid).
2.4.5.5 Unemployment and Underemployment.
As I aforementioned, the 1988 resettlement plan designated that 40 percent of the rural population of displace people (144,600 people) would enter into the industrial and service sector in cities and towns (REG, 1988). However, years of practice demonstrates this retrenchment proposal was too ambitious, because the job vacancies have also to be created for those whose employment in 1600 enterprises and factory which submerged by the Three Gorges operation. Given the overstaffing and high unemployment rate in the reservoir area, the employment absorption capacity in the urban industrial sectors is limited. As Meikle and Zhu (2000, p.127) suggest that “the movement to a socialist market economy in China has been changing the operational environment for involuntary resettlement, and, in particular, its implications for displacees’ employment opportunities”. Therefore, a pragmatic framework of resettlement policy will have to be compatible to the rules of market economy (de Wet, 2001).
The closure of some major debt-ridden state enterprises with weak competitive competency led to mounting unemployment. The small or medium size industries, including over 1,000 industrial and mining enterprises affected by the Project and local small enterprises or migrants’ enterprises set up for resettles, with old-fashioned equipment, backward management and narrow marketing channels have performed very poorly in the market economy and have gone bankrupted or eventually closed down for economic and/or environmental reasons, thus reducing the potential for local jobs (Fang & Chen, 2002). Further, the majority of oustees living at the poverty-stricken reservoir area such as the middle and upper sections of the Three Gorges Dam, where conditions of economic market are not favorable and have limited resource or labor advantage for attracting outside investment, have suffered more from the loss of job and income (Jing, 1999). It is increasingly unlikely in an intensively competitive labor market for those former farmers who are of low level of education and technical skill to find employment by competing against other urban residents whom had appropriate qualifications and skills but were nevertheless themselves laid-off (Meikle & Zhu, 2000). For example, there was a 20 percent drop of the employment rate after displacement among investigated resettlers (Tan et al., 2003). These relevant factors serve to explain the steady income loss among both resettlers and host populations (Jing, 1999).
Not all rural resettlers were able to engage in agriculture after being displaced. Some have to find employments in cities or towns. Efforts have been taken by Government to have them to learn new knowledge and skills in the hope of helping them to seek job opportunities in cities or towns. However, in reality, the low levels of education and discrimination against rural people made rural resettlers’ employment more difficult than anticipated. For those who do find a job, it is most likely a wage labor. Normally, this kind of wage laboring is paid lower than the minimum wage set by the government at a low rate which is not even enough to sustain a basic livelihood (Nayak, 2000). Women are paid much less than men by convention, though this is against the Labor Law ((ibid).
2.4.5.6 Conflicts with Host Community
The sociological aspects of resettlement, such as effective social integration and building social capital, have largely remained ignored in the design and implementations of most development projects involved resettlement and displacement. The rights of population in host areas tend to be administratively neglected without being considered as an “important aspect of the success of the resettlement and longer-term settlement, or that they are active participants in the process” (McDonald-Wilmsen, & Webber, 2010). Unfair distribution of resources and opportunities (jobs, housing, and benefits) and the relative prioritization of resettlers’ needs over the host communities naturally resulted in a deep pool of resentment and hostility towards resettlers (Shami, 1993). Because both the displaced and the host populations are politically disempowered and not allowed to adequately participate and negotiate in the planning and execution of the resettlement (Cernea, 1995b). And the host populations have even less regional (let alone national) power to affect the resettlement policies as those displaced do, as the displaced population at least have some leverages, simply given their position as a displaced migrant, to bargain for better treatment. Beside, due to the ambiguous information perceived by both the hosts and the displaced, they tended to be jealous of each other’s ‘benefits’ (Koenig & Diarra, 2000). This being so, host communities are often resistant to the full integration with newcomers, refusing them access to common resources. Conflicts occur when host communities have been encountered to share the land and compete over already scarce resources at the resettlement sites (Scudder, 1973). Their lands are, due to the nature of state ownership of all land in China, easily taken away without the provision of appropriate compensation such as substitute land, or adequate cash. This was particularly true in the Three Gorges Dam area, host communities, normally in the form of villages, sit outside the resettlement process and they are expected to accept whatever the administrative arrangement coming from the above (central government and local officials) without question. The displaced people somehow one way or another had been consulted (even though not adequately) in advance before the resettlement process.
2.4.5.7 Social Disintegration, Cultural Disconnection, and Discrimination
To make space for The Three Gorges Project, in excess of a million Chinese inhabitants have been evicted from their land and have in essence become ‘Reservoir Refugees’. It forces people to remove themselves from their homes, and the other basic protection it can provide (Mooney, 2005). A number of important questions concerning social justice are also raised in this context of dislocation and resettlement, one of the most egregious, of which I shall call ‘Cultural Genocide’. The use of this admittedly evocative and morally provocative term is meant to refer to the way in which massive dislocations of Chinese country folk have been bringing about the deconstruction and thus in essence, the demise or ‘death’ of their socially defining heritage, with reference to both community and personal identity. This is happening when the relocation of local populations in such monumental proportions is fundamentally so disruptive, disenfranchising and alienating. Such disruption has led to the degradation, if not the annihilation of their unique cultural traditions, which may include folk medicine, special crafts and agriculture skills, art, cooking, and oral traditions of mythology. The hastened loss of their distinct dialects, art, craft and musical forms by way of which their cultural identity has been expressed for centuries is no minor matter, as is the loss to many of their sense of purpose.
The various impacts of mass displacement and resettlement on individuals and communities on its various dimensions have been widely documented and researched (Saxena, 2008). It is abroadly agreed by many that development induce displacement are extremely disruptive for people to be cut off from their former land and environment, their traditional livelihood and means of survival to resettle in other places (Mooney, 2005). Large-scale involuntary displacement tears apart the existing social structure based on religion, kinship, or other affinities which are built up over generations (WWF, 2003). These sometimes very subtle socio-cultural and psychological processes have played an important role in providing social support in terms of “representation, mediation and conflict resolution” (Kothari, 1996, p.1478). As Michael Cernea has reminded us,
“It disperses and fragments communities, dismantles patterns of social organizations and interpersonal ties; kinship groups become scattered as well. Life-sustaining informal networks of reciprocal help, local voluntary associations, and self-organised mutual service are disrupted. This is a net loss of valuable ‘social capital,’ that compounds the loss of natural, physical, and human capital” (Cernea, 2000, p.3666).
The dismal record of massive displacement and resettlement before the 1980s suggests that the long dragged-out process of relocation has caused immense traumatic physiological and psychological stress and socio-cultural consequences, affecting the health and wellbeing of both the resettlers and in some circumstance, their host. For the “very cultural identity of the community and the individuals within it are often disrupted, devaluated and sometime decimated” (Kothari, 1996, p.1478). Displacement is an “extremely potent divisive and alienating force that weakens human bonding and sometimes obliterates it” when members of displaced groups are settled in other established communities (Nayak, 2000, p.84). In Chinese tradition, family ties and community relationship are pivotal and salient orientation infrastructures, but the Chinese government has ignored their foundational importance. Moving out from the traditional land has negative social and cultural impact on the relocatees in various ways (Saxena, 2008). These include the “dismantling of production systems, desecration of ancestral sacred zones or graves and temples, scattering of kinship groups and family systems, disorganization of informal social networks that provide mutual support, weakening of self-management and social control, disruption of trade and market links” (Kothari, 1996. p.1477). In addition, traditional way of livelihood demonstrated in singing, dancing, storytelling, playing games, and so on, has significantly disrupted or weakened (Chetham, 2002). The occurrence of other social and customary festivities/ceremonies has also declined remarkably (Nayak, 2000). A typical day to daily life in the Three Gorges area was presented by Chetham in his book Before the Deluge,
“Daily life did not change much from century to century…the days were governed by the seasons and by the cycle of years when crops were plentiful, followed by years of flood and drought. Village and town life was punctuated by birth, marriage and death, and the celebrations and rituals that accompanied them. Wedding usually involve a series of Confucian-based rituals honoring the couple’s parents, while funerals incorporated a more lively combination of Taoist and Buddhist practices. Some funeral rituals common in the Three Gorges as late as the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and still occasionally seen today, are thought to have been derived from the ancient musical traditions of the Ba people 1,500 years earlier. In Wushan and Zigui, near the Hubei border, villagers observe the death of family members by chanting and dancing to the rhythm of a solitary drum. This mourning dance was believed to reduce the tally of sins committed by the deceased and to help the soul of the deceased rise to heaven.” (2002, p.50).
It is very likely that this rare practice cannot be lasting long because the changes in social structure and environment that relocation entails disrupt traditional forms of ritual practice. It will be very hard to engage such a unique practice without the relevance of original contexts and circumstances (Chetham, 2002; Oliver-Smith, 2010). For these kind of practices will be judged by the people around and the resettlers have the tendency to merge into the new environment, and likely to abandon the ritual (Chetham, 2002).
Most people, especially the elderly, become more vulnerable and suffer greatly from the relocation and separation from home environments in which most have spent their whole lives because the adjustments of changes during the dislocation process are more difficult for elderly to cope in terms of the mental, emotional and physical distress (Xia, et al., 2007; Oliver-Smith, 2011). Elderly peasants who believe that the fundamental man-land relationship of man belong to the land can experience psychological and physical illness when live in a tall apartment buildings (Chetham, 2002). There is now considerable evidence that relocated farmers have been discriminated against and excluded in many host communities. One aspect of this discrimination is explained by the fact that the newcomers have come to be resented by host communities because of resources (land) competition and unfair treatment by resettlement officials (Scudder, 1973). Chinese villagers have a very strong clan tie. They normally bear the same surname and are related one way or another. This being so, the resettlers are normally regarded as outsiders or strangers, a situation which it now sadly seems last for at least one to two generations. In its extreme form, the large-scale dam projects-induced compulsory resettlement of indigenous groups has been deemed to be a form of ethnocide (Namy, 2007).
For long-distance resettlement, unlike ‘near resettlement’ or ‘vicinity relocation’ of which people displaced appear to have maintained some of their existing kinship networks and some of the production systems, however, resettlers have paid higher social costs in terms of blending into the new society (Heggelund, 2004 & 2006; Xia et al., 2007). The most common obstacle is the dialect of the resettlement area, which is highly likely to be different from their own because in Southern China, people living in conjunct towns speak Chinese differently, let alone those who participate long-distance resettlement program. The typical case of illustrating this is resettlers from Three Gorges region to Chongming Island in Shanghai, and east coastal areas (McDonald-Wilmsen, & Webber, 2010). Those resettlers who are accustomed to their particular way of life, are suddenly exposed to a new living and working environment which can sometime be hostile to them (Namy, 2007). Misunderstanding occurs, conflicts and insecurities arise easily and new friendships are extremely difficult to make. Understandably, the social and cultural ‘incorporation’ and ‘integration’ of resettlers with the host communities has been regarded as a long-term process, but the difficulties and socio-cultural devastation incurred have persisted for many people far too long.
Personal marginalization and social exclusion have also occurs when families or communities lose social power, particularly economic one. In the case of dam-induced relocation, many individuals found out their possessed knowledge and skills unsuitable within the context of the new location (Cernea, 1995b). In Yunyang County situated in the Three Gorges area, for example, 61 out of the 358 people who are assigned to work in manufactory industries in the new towns chose to return to their original villages because they found it difficult to adjust their new way of lives and to become accustomed to “indoor life and the fixed working hours expected of them in industrial jobs” (Chetham, 2002, p.200). Further, economic marginalization of this kind has often been accompanied by social, political and psychological marginalization, connected to the loss of previously held social status (Cernea, 2000). The expression of social exclusion that many of those people who have been resettled have experienced is the feelings of injustice, disrespect and heightened vulnerability (ibid).
The stress of displacement and its associated losses is also known to adversely affect health and wellbeing. As W. Adams noted: “Compulsory resettlement is stressful because of the way in which people are uprooted from homes and occupation and brought to question their own values” (quoted in Namy, 2007, p.13). This stress is multidimensional, as Scudder and Colson (1982, p.56) viewed, with “physiological, socio-cultural and psychological ramifications”. The physiological dimension pertains the socio-cultural stress and consequently various health risks relates to the loss of social network (Oliver-Smith, 2010; McDonald-Wilmsen & Webber, 2010). Psychopathology dimension refers to a traumatic experience that those resettlers face, which is “grieving for a lost home syndrome” and “anxiety over the future” (Scudder, 1973, p.51 & 2005). The mental stress leads to the deterioration of their physical health and weakens their ability for improvement and eventually results in the failure of resettlement (Fernandes, 2000; McDonald-Wilmsen & Webber, 2010)
And finally, unsurprisingly, Chinese resettlement policy discriminates against rural migrants as they are generally discriminated in whole Chinese society. A dual standard of relocation policy adopted to favors urban resettlers and discriminates against rural resettlers. One example is that the resettlement policy offers higher compensation for house rebuilding for urban resettlers than rural resettlers (Li et al., 2001)
2.4.5.8 Embezzlement and Corruption
“The most ominous sign for the proponents of the economic superiority of the super dam is the evidence of its growing incompatibility with the exigencies of the market economy. Huge, state-run construction projects often have a structural tendency toward massive cost overruns and corruption. The Three Gorges project, for example, is increasingly plagued by such matters.”(McCormack, 2001, p. 22)
Corruption, embezzlement, manipulation of subcontracts and stealing among local officials has been rampant (Chetham, 2002). The construction of the Three Gorges Project has provided many local officials with opportunities to fill their own pockets, misdirect or mismanage with government resettlement funds under their control. The nature of administrative decentralization that the Chinese Party-State adopted decides that the power of operating the actual resettlement rests on the provincial and local resettlement authorities. It was far too easy for local authorities to keep the funds, since they are responsible for allocation of funds which intended to help to displace locals. Only a few among many cases of corruption committed by local officials were made public, most of which involved charges against township officials for taking bribes and for embezzlement of public funds and misappropriation, while failing to address petitioners’ grievances (Chao, 2001; Beattie, 2002; International Rivers Network, 2003a; Alberts et al., 2004; Heggelund, 2006). The National Audit Office revealed in early 1999 that US $57.7 million (nearly 12 percent of the total funds granted to resettlement in 1998) of the resettlement funds were illegally used on other purposes in 1998 alone. And again in between 2004 and 2005, it reported that the amount of nearly 3 percent of the entire resettlement funds had been misappropriated (Becker, 1999; Alberts et al., 2004; Oster, 2007).For example, the government officials involved in the Three Gorges Project have been put into jail for using significant allocations of reclamation fund which were redirected to irrelevant but vested interest projects such as building lavish public buildings, hotels and roads, one of them was in fact sentenced to death (Jing, 1999; Chetham, 2002). The head of Three Gorges Economic Development Corporation was accused of selling jobs for the positions in the company, according the Xinhua News Agency (2006d), and he took out the project related loans and disappeared with the money without a trace. Another example of such corruption involved land which was supposed to be assigned to reservoir migrants being illegally sold for profit by some local governments, without any distribution of the money either to the displaced people themselves or forwards facilitating new town developments in which they could reside (Chetham, 2002). According to Xinhua News Agency, local government in Country Shibao, Shichuan province, gain illegally a huge profit by selling the land at a higher price to business men for the purpose of commercial development. And at the same time, the peasants who lost their land and therefore lost their way of living were not able to get any compensation (ibid).
Other types of corrupt practiced by both local officials and displacees included a wide range of schemes to obtain the resettlement compensation and other benefits from the resettlement scheme (Checham, 2002). The making of the ‘false migration’ during the resettlement process, ‘false divorce’, ‘early marriage’ and ‘registered unborn baby’ were techniques also employed to increase the number of displaced people and to get additional compensation (Checham, 2002). Normally in this regard, high-level officials are in the best position to profit from corruption on a large-scale (ibid).
2.4.5.9 Protests and Conflict, Resistance and Repression
“Resistance to uprooting, whatever the cause, provides individuals and communities a means of reaffirming both personal and cultural identity by demanding recognition of their losses and a means to reassert control over lives that have been disempowered.”(Oliver-Smith, 2010, p179 ).
My aim in providing this brief discussion of the historical background of the protracted debate surrounding the decision to approve the TGDP is to show unequivocally that the moral dimension of the controversy is still very much alive, as evidence continues to accrue about its adverse environmental and deleterious socio-cultural effects. It is also well worth reiterating that amongst those who have inveighed against the building of the dam are many highly trained professional people in fields of direct relevance to the issues raised. As has been pointed out here and elsewhere (Barber & Ryder, 1993; Dai 1998), amongst the many voices raised in ‘protest’, we have heard from hydraulic power engineers, sedimentation specialists, geologists, archaeologists, social scientists, environmentalists, to name only a few over the issues of the conditions of displacement and the magnitude of environmental damage that actually exists. Even Chinese military and national security specialists have expressed their concerns that the centralization of so much hydroelectric power in one place serves increasingly to make the Chinese nation especially vulnerable to potentially cataclysmic terrorist intrusions. As I noted earlier in this chapter at least two generations of Three Gorges Dam opponents from Li Rui, formerly Mao Zedong’s personal secretary and a Vice Minister of water resources, to Dai Qing, a former Guangming Daily journalist who in February 1989 published an anthology of articles opposing the dam, have been discriminated against, dismissed from office, publicly humiliated, branded as ‘rightists’ and sometimes sent to prison for their dissenting views. Yet it is often these critical voices which are most urgently needed during the kind of rapid modernization on which China has embarked.
It is to be hoped that it is now clear form the foregoing discussion of the ongoing debate about the construction of the Three Gorges Dam that there have been many voices both within and without China raised in well- considered protest of this massive project. The problem resides not from the absence of adversarial voice, but from the fact that the voice of challenge has been either muffled, made politically inaudible, and cavalierly dismissed or covertly suppressed by threatening the security of those who found ways of making their voices audible enough to make the proponents of the dam construction uncomfortable. In the end, the decision to push the dam project through the Chinese government doors superseded the question whether the voices raised against it were judicious and sustained by values that reflect our humanity and respect for nature more than our quest for money, power and status.
Social disarticulation and ignorance of displacees’ basic entitlements during the process of involuntary resettlement lead to “social protest, demonstrations, sharp political tensions, and instability” (Cernea, 1995b, p.257). Project planners frequently attribute resistance against development projects to only economic motives, and in practice it is in fact the focus of the most cases (Oliver-Smith, 2001), especially in China. However, human motivations are generally ‘complex’ and the actions they choose in resistance to forced displacement are based on many interwoven concerns such as “broken promises, unfulfilled plans, destructive environmental impacts, inadequate or inappropriate compensation, inferior replacement land, or cultural violations in settlement or residential patterns constitutes a tragic litany of errors and corruption that has produced profound misery and justifiable anger and resistance” (Oliver-Smith, 2001, p.85). The growing awareness among displaced population and has given rise to protests among these migrants. In relation to different level of powerful governments, resettlers are weak. The national laws that are supposed to protect its citizens are also ineffective, particularly in the case of the TGP. Because it is such a high-profile, politically- symbolic, globally-known project, the government has done all it can to keep the controversy in and out of China muted. The cases associated with the TGP are not easy to be accepted in courts and even so, it is not easy to find a willing lawyer to take the cases without being fear of confronting state agencies. Normally, Chinese people are endurable in history; one individual or communities acquiesce quietly in the face of external intervention. They would rather to live with a few, which is better than nothing, than to choose to fight against perhaps the most hegemonic and powerful national authorities in the world (Zhang, 1999). After the beginning of 1980s, the implementation of the Chinese government’s opening-up policy, development projects are synonymous to progress and industrialism. Under this circumstance, the protests against big development projects were labeled as ‘anti-development’, ‘unpatriotic’ and expressions of the ungrateful selfishness people who are unwilling to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of the nation (Fernandes, 2000; McCully, 2001). The philosophical/ethical principle of “sacrificing for the greater common good” was a practice widely regarded as legitimate by the rulers, and even by many of those people forcedly displaced. This is not to say that there were no protests against the Three Gorges Dam construction. Not everyone is willing to give up his own economic interests for the collective benefits and the collectivism in traditional Chinese society was also challenged by the living philosophy of “money omnipotence”. Many of the core disputes are often assumed to be economic in nature. However, the concerns that people express in resistance movements are generally more complex, involved in economic, political and socio-cultural issues (Oliver-Smith, 2001 & 2010). Disputes over the unfair treatments and mismanagement of compensation funds of the Three Gorges Dam have generated small resistance movements even though the accessibility of information was limited under the current Chinese regime (ibid). In some cases, the opposition was significantly manifest. The use of enforceable legal guarantees in China is limited, especially in the case of TGP, where the resettlement was considered to be an important matter of state policy and therefore held a status of beyond challenge (Stein, 1998). Alternatively, since the 1990s, the victims have resorted to a range of non-legal channels such as written petitions to higher authorities, protests, public sit-in demonstrations, or even deadly confrontations in rare cases if they believe that there is no other option to protect their own interest (Stein, 1998; Dai, 2011).
Authoritarian regimes such as China with diminished freedoms of expression generally are not tolerating the public political appeals of resisters (Khagram, 2004; Oliver-Smith, 2010). China’s utilitarian principle of “do what is in the interest of the common good” has neither encouraged nor tolerated such social movements against large development projects in fear of shakening the social stability. Complete and accurate presenting of China’s human rights violations regarding the resettlement practices has been impossible. Since the majority of the Chinese networks are monitored by the authorities, the reports of human rights violations regarding sensitive political issues are soon ‘suppressed and deleted’ (Stein, 1998). Outspoken critics of the TGP, or of the corruption and embezzlement of resettlement funds have actually been silenced, beaten up, arrested and even forced into exile during the earlier days of construction (Dai, 2011). The well-known Chinese dissident/journalist Dai Qing was jailed for 10 months in 1989 for the ‘crime’ of editing the book Yangtze! Yangtze! — a collection of articles criticizing the Three Gorges Dam (Stein, 1998; McCully, 2001). The book was banned in China for providing “opinions for chaos and riots” (McCully, 2001, p.265). In most parts of the reservoir area, when protests have occurred, they have met with or sabotaged by forms of co-option, internal divisions within communities created by governments and project authorities who use outright force and police/military: repression (Cernea, 1995b; Kothari, 1996; Walia, 2003). Unlike the massive social movements against dams as happened in India in post-independence period, however, individual actions are more common than collective movements in China, even though sustaining individual resistance mentally, financially and politically against powerful authorities is not easy, and chances serious personal risks such as bodily harm or even death in certain circumstances when resisting (Oliver-Smith, 2010). In March 2001, three farmers from Yunyang County have been detained by police for months on charges of “disturbing the resettlement, leaking state secrets, and maintaining illicit relations with a foreign country, a reference to their contacts with the international press” attempting to deliver petitions protesting the illegal relocation of county resettlement funds and inadequate compensation to officials in Beijing (Chetham, 2002, p.196).
2.2.4.10 Further Displacement
People forcedly displaced once are not free from being displaced again. Further displacement can occur due to a failed adaptation in resettlement sites socially or environmentally (Nayak, 2000). 400 million people from Chongqing (including some migrants) have to relocate to somewhere else was the example of failed environmental adaptation. Future development projects in the previous resettlement sites may also displace people again (ibid). In Badong County, for instance, it was the third time for some out of 25,000 people to relocate for the development projects or environmental failure and this time was to make room for the Three Gorges Dam. The first human displacement in this region was for a smaller dam project in the 1980s. Then, a decade later, the threat of landslides forced residents to move about three miles away. Moreover, any restoration or reconstruction of livelihood is put at risk of another forced or volunteered displacement because displaced people’s earlier acquired social and productive skills may be less applicable in a new environment (OECD, 1992). For example, in 2007, a group of 57 villagers who left 5 years ago due to the TGDP all returned from Jiangxi Province to their original village out of the reason of a failure to adapt agricultural difference (Yardley, 2007). Further and multi displacement represent the ‘wastes’ of public funding, the ‘futility’ of certain long-term projects, and the ‘needless’ human suffering and economic loss (Nayak, 2000).