[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

dam-l "China Shifts on How to Resettle Million People for Giant Dam" The New York Times

May 25, 1999
The New York Times

          China Shifts on How to Resettle Million
          People for Giant Dam


          By ERIK ECKHOLM

BEIJING -- In an implicit admission that severe problems 
bedevil the giant Three Gorges Dam project, Prime 
Minister Zhu Rongji has announced a major change in 
strategy for resettling at least 1.3 million people who will 
be driven from their homes. 

Zhu, in a speech that was heavily publicized Monday, 
said more of the people who will be uprooted by a new 
400-mile-long lake on the Yangtze River should be sent 
to distant parts of the country. 

The current effort to move displaced people to sites 
near their old homes has been plagued by public 
bitterness, inadequate funds and an acute shortage of 
cropland. But critics say the new solution may be no 
more practical. 

In his speech, given last week at a closed conference, 
Zhu also said many of the industries facing inundation 
by the new dam were so obsolete and polluting that 
they should simply be closed rather than moved. He
also issued a new warning against misuse of funds 
intended to help the uprooted people. 

Half the front page of Monday's People's Daily, the 
flagship newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, 
was devoted to an article recounting Zhu's speech on 
the dam project and to an editorial voicing similar
concerns. 

The prominence given to Zhu's remarks suggests that 
he remains in firm command of the government, with 
the support of President Jiang Zemin and other 
Communist leaders. 

Zhu is a proponent of deep market-oriented economic 
reforms and closer ties with the West. Some Chinese 
and foreign political experts have speculated that Zhu 
has been seriously weakened in the anti-American 
atmosphere following the bombing of China's Embassy 
in Belgrade.
  
The Three Gorges project is a special interest of Li Peng, 
the conservative former Prime Minister who remains No. 2 
in the Communist Party, ahead of Zhu. Li and other 
leaders have portrayed the Three Gorges Dam as an 
homage to China's prowess that will provide great benefits 
in electric power and flood control. 

Zhu, who replaced Li as prime minister last year, has 
never shown enthusiasm for the dam, which will cost 
tens of billions of dollars. 

Although Monday's articles did not suggest that the 
project should be halted, they differed markedly in tone 
from the usual glowing accounts of progress. 

The project has long been attacked by critics abroad 
who say the environmental and social costs will greatly 
outweigh the economic benefits. Many Chinese 
privately question the dam, but over the last decade 
public criticism has been suppressed. Only in the last 
few months have sporadic articles in the official press 
mentioned the emerging problems. 

          The relocation of at least 1.3 million people from 
a 400-mile stretch of the Yangtze River basin in central 
China, mostly in the crowded, mountainous province of 
Sichuan, has emerged as the most serious immediate 
obstacle. 

          In the next four years, when the serpentine lake 
is to be partly filled, more than 550,000 people, including 
poor farmers and factory workers in hundreds of towns, 
must be moved and given new livelihoods. As many more 
people again will have to be moved by 2008 when the 
project is completed. 

Officials assert that 160,000 people have already been 
relocated. But private reports indicate that some people 
have refused to move, that the slopes where farmers are 
being sent cannot support new farming and that the 
meager funds to help settlers have often been stolen or 
wasted. 

In February, a journal in Beijing published a searing 
critique by an anonymous Chinese sociologist who said 
the plight of uprooted people may become "an explosive 
social problem." 

The article, in the journal Strategy and Management, 
also suggested that sending people to other parts of the 
country, the new answer offered by Zhu, will be no 
panacea. "In China," the article said, "all of the areas 
with better natural conditions were filled with people 
long ago." 

In his speech, according to Monday's report, Zhu agreed 
that farming the steep mountains along the Yangtze 
would cause erosion and other ecological problems, 
"creating endless harm." 

He urged other provinces, regions and cities to 
"enthusiastically absorb and resettle migrants and make 
more contributions to the construction of the Three 
Gorges project."