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dam-l South China Morning Post "Land for gorges project 'illegally



claimed' "  
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South China Morning Post, Tuesday, June 20, 2000

Land for gorges project 'illegally claimed'

VIVIEN PIK-KWAN CHAN

Displaced peasants have complained to Beijing that
local governments in Chongqing, Sichuan province,
have illegally claimed land for the Three Gorges Dam
project.

Their petition comes as Premier Zhu Rongji repeated
promises that the quality of the massive project would
not be compromised.

Despite Beijing's repeated warnings against graft in
the US$70 billion (HK$545 billion) project, central
and provincial authorities have received hundreds of
complaints accusing grassroot officials of rampant
abuses.

These include claiming more land than required,
reselling claimed land, faking the number of resettled
peasants and embezzling public funds used for
resettlement.

In one case, land bureau officials in Zhong county
were accused of overclaiming 134 hectares from
Hungxing village, Zhongzhou township, forcing
more than 1,300 peasants to leave their homes, the
Guangdong weekly Nanfang Zhoumo reported.

A petition by Hungxing villagers said the actual area
of land claimed was 160 hectares, instead of the 26
hectares approved by higher authorities in Sichuan.

Other petitioners have complained that Zhong county
officials seized twice the approved amount of quality
farmland from five other villages in the name of
building towns or schools for resettled migrants. The
"embezzled" land was used for private real estate
development or resold by local officials.

"Zhong county officials have claimed they calculated
only 'the land area that has paid taxes', so the area
actually claimed was much larger than the area
reported to higher authorities," the report said.

"But lawyers representing the villagers argued that
there are no such thing as 'taxed area' or 'non-taxed
area'."

Victims have appealed to central authorities to tighten
supervision of the land claim process and monitor
new town construction as most such development
was sub-standard.

Special inspectors have been sent to units responsible
for resettling people affected by the Three Gorges
project to purge cadres guilty of corruption after
several cases of embezzlement were uncovered.

Mr Zhu has vowed that the project's engineering
standards would not be compromised despite the tight
schedule, heavy construction cost and desperate
resettlement burden.

"Experts were dispatched and will continue to be sent
to the project area to ensure engineering quality, tight
financial control and smooth progress of resettlement
work," Mr Zhu told senior officials at the ninth
plenary meeting of the Three Gorges Dam project in
Beijing on Sunday.

Aware that resettlement is behind schedule, Mr Zhu
urged local officials to "strive hard to achieve this
year's resettlement target" so the dam could be
partially filled by 2003 as planned. But he warned
resettlement should be carried out responsibly so as
not to trigger social instability.

Officials project that 1.07 million farmers, 85 per cent
of them from Chongqing, will have to move by the
time the dam's 560km-long reservoir is filled in 2009.

Some critics claim the actual number of those affected
is more than 1.8 million. Only 227,000 farmers have
been resettled since 1992.

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