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dam-l IPS March 13 China: Silience on Three Gorges Dam Grows Deeper
By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING, Mar 13 (IPS) - As the chorus of criticism against China's Three
Gorges Dam grows around the world, the silence imposed on public debate
within China over the project's feasibility and dangers has only grown
deeper.
As what skeptics call the largest, costliest and riskiest dam in history,
the Three Gorges dam will be a key focus of the first International Day of
Action against Dams and for Rivers, Water and Life, to be marked on Mar. 14.
Close to 50 actions and campaigns in some 20 countries will take place
Saturday, calling for an end to half a century's history of large
dam-building.
But China, which is carrying out the largest resettlement programme in
the history of dam-building for the Three Gorges project, will be an
exception to these events. Here, there will be no protests and no
demonstrations.
For the five years the project has been underway, the state media has
reported only the rosy side of the Three Gorges project, presenting it as a
powerful symbol of new, prosperous China.
Public debate has been silenced and no voices of concern or disagreement
with the mammoth project, rising on the Yangtze river, have been allowed to
mar the dam's image.
Presiding over the diversion of Yangtze river for the project last year,
outgoing Premier Li Peng said the Three Gorges Dam would ''demonstrate to
the world that the Chinese people have the ability to build the biggest and
most beneficial irrigation and hydroelectric project in the world''.
Chinese official estimates put the dam's cost at 25 billion U.S.
dollars, but critical economists say the real figure is more like 32
billion dollars.
The human cost is even more staggering. The dam is forcing the
resettlement of more than 1.2 million people living along the Yangtze
river. It will submerge more than 320 villages and 140 towns, together with
some of the most precious artifacts and archaeological sites of China's
long civilization.
However, proponents of the dam project claim that the facts in favor of
the dam are compelling. They say that when completed in 2009, the Three
Gorges Dam will generate 18,000 megawatts of electricity and help meet the
country's growing energy demand.
They add that it will control flooding along the lower Yangtze, which
have killed an estimated 300,000 people this century, and drive the
development of China's impoverished, backward hinterland.
Critics remain unconvinced. For them, one of the most pressing questions
is whether the Chinese government is organized or competent enough to
simultaneously undertake the relocation of up to two million people.
The answer is no, according to a new study released by the U.S.- based
International Rivers Network (IRN) this week.
The study quotes a Chinese official involved in the dam resettlement
effort as saying that ''the Chinese authorities will have to
rely on the military or a man-made flood to force the people out of their
homes''.
The report was carried out by Chinese sociologist Wu Ming in January this
year, and covered five of the 22 countries to be partly inundated by the
reservoir. It foresees a resettlement disaster if the first stage of
inundation
of the reservoir behind the dam on the Yangtze river goes ahead.
The report talks about widespread falsification of resettlement figures,
embezzlement of relocation funds by local officials and ''widespread
resentment and foot-dragging opposition to resettlement''.
Wu Ming estimates that only some 50,000 people have been relocated in
the last five years. Yet official accounts in January say that some 200,000
people have already been resettled, pointing to routine falsification of
figures by local officials eager to impress their superiors.
''By 2003, if the project goes ahead, over half a million will be
displaced, with an equal number to be moved by 2009,'' the report said.
But given the current speed of relocation and the false picture depicted
by local officials, ''the stage is set for a repeat of the disastrous
displacements of reservoir refugees that have occurred again and again
since 1949, involving hasty, sometimes violent relocations to inappropriate
sites where the displaced often end up in extreme poverty'', it added.
If history is any judge, China's record of dam-building and resettlement
has been gloomy. Many schemes, commissioned in the Mao Zedong era
(1949-1976), ran into serious problems when they uprooted millions of people.
The worst case occurred in the 1950s, when Soviet engineers designed
what was Communist China's first and biggest hydro- electric scheme at
Sanmenxia on the Yellow River. Built in haste during the Great Leap Forward
in early 1960s, Sanmenxia today sits silted to the gills, useless as a
means of flood prevention and for power generation.
Some 410,000 peasants were moved to make way for the scheme.
Altogether, more than 10 million people were displaced by similar gigantic
dam projects during the Mao era.
A report carried out by the Ministry of Water Resources in 1990 revealed
that up to 40 percent of these 10 million resettlers were living in dire
poverty 30 years later.
The builders of the Three Gorges Dam say they have learned their lesson,
but Wu Ming's field report paints a different picture. It shows that
despite enormous propaganda efforts by the government, people slated for
resettlement have uncertain expectations about the future.
''Throughout my trip, interviewees expressed a sense of resignation
about the inevitability of the Three Gorges Dam project, and a widespread,
though by no means unanimous, belief that people's living standards and
general quality of life would decline after resettlement,'' Wu wrote in his
study.
''The international community shares the blame for this emerging human
rights tragedy,'' IRN executive director Owen Lammers said in a statement.
''The Three Gorges Dam must never be built,'' added professor Huang Wanli,
one of China's most senior hydrologists. (END/IPS/AP-EN/AB/JS/98)
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Three Gorges Campaign
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way
Berkeley, CA 94703
threegorges@irn.org
tel: 510.848.1155 ext 317
fax: 510.848.1008
www.irn.org