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dam-l NY Times May 29, 1999 Editorial Desk: Resettlement on the Yangtze
May 29, 1999, Saturday
Editorial Desk, The New York Times
Resettlement on the Yangtze
There are new signs that China's top leaders are
facing up to the destructive reality of the Three
Gorges Dam. This month Prime Minister Zhu
Rongji made a highly publicized speech about
the difficulty of resettling 1.3 million people whose
towns and farmlands will be inundated by the dam's
400-mile-long reservoir. The project is plagued with
engineering and cost problems, but resettlement
issues have been the most difficult to ignore.
Critics of the project have argued that resettlement
on this scale is impossible. Not only are flooded
communities destroyed, but cities and towns that
are forced to absorb the migrants would face
economic and social upheaval. More than 150,000
people have already been uprooted, but many
remain jobless and landless. An additional 550,000
have to be moved over the next four years alone.
Chinese officials have long said that the people
and factories would simply be moved up the
surrounding hillsides above the Yangtze River.
Mr. Zhu now seems to admit that is unrealistic.
Instead he proposes to send the displaced to
other regions.
But resettlement of large numbers of people far
from their native homes has been disastrous in
the past. Many eventually drifted back to their
home regions. Others lived for years as
impoverished refugees. The only solution is to
reduce the size of the dam, or better yet,
abandon it altogether.