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DAM-L Chinese expert says new resettlement rules won't solve Three Gorges' problems (fwd)
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Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 17:34:51 -0500
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Subject: Chinese expert says new resettlement rules won't solve Three Gorges'
problems
THREE GORGES PROBE
March 29, 2001
A Three Gorges Probe Exclusive
Chinese expert says new resettlement rules
won't solve Three Gorges' problems
by Wei Yi
Civil strife and corruption will continue to plague
world's largest civil works project, predicts respected
sociologist Dr. Wei Yi.
Chinese resettlement expert Wei Yi has warned that new
regulations governing the relocation of more than one
million people whose homes will be flooded by the Three
Gorges dam are likely to fail.
The new regulations, drafted over the past two years, and
approved by the State Council last month, were introduced
in an attempt to rid the world's largest civil works project of
corruption and to quell civil strife over forced resettlement.
Dr. Wei, who writes under a pseudonym for fear of
government reprisals, argues that the new regulations
inadequately deal with the serious problems afflicting the
Three Gorges dam.
Dr. Wei first stunned the world in February 1999 when he
published a critical review of the Three Gorges resettlement
operation in a Beijing-based think-tank journal of state
policies, called Strategy and Management. His article
received world-wide press coverage.
While the new regulations show that dam officials have
learned some lessons from their past resettlement mistakes,
serious problems remain unresolved, Dr. Wei says.
The new regulations, for example, fail to eliminate the
problem of "fake migrants" -- people who through
corruption and cronyism, manage to claim limited
resettlement funds even though their homes and businesses
are not being flooded by the dam's reservoir. In fact, the
government has made matters worse, Dr. Wei argues, by
adding new state employees and ex-convicts to the list of
people who can claim resettlement funds if they are moving
into, or back to respectively, the reservoir area.
The growing resentment by legitimate resettlers toward fake
migrants "will become an explosive problem in future,"
warns Dr. Wei.
The new regulations also fail to address the coercive
techniques being used by frantic local officials to clear their
areas of occupants in time for the 2003 filling of the
reservoir. Under the banner of "resettlement governed by
the legal system" local officials are lying to their residents,
saying circumstances are favorable in the "distant"
resettlement areas. When these residents express skepticism
-- often based on the personal testimonies of their cheated
predecessors -- local officials bring in the police to force
reluctant migrants to move.
If this situation is allowed to continue, Dr. Wei fears a
"historic tragedy" will be repeated. Here Dr. Wei is
referring to the sorry history of Chinese dam building in
which millions of citizens were forcibly moved to distant
areas. Unable to reestablish their livelihoods and
communities there, they returned to their homeland region
only to live landless and penniless in refugee-like conditions.
More than six million dam-refugees are thought to live in
impoverished conditions in China today.
As for ridding the Three Gorges project of corruption,
which has become epidemic, Dr. Wei congratulates the
government for trying to deal with the problem, but
condemns the means. The new regulations rely on
"traditional administrative measures" rather than by
improving the legal system, and allowing press scrutiny and
public oversight. "Without appropriate decentralization of
power, and without transparency and democracy in
resettlement policy decision-making and the use of
relocation funds, more problems with the management of
resettlement funds will be unavoidable," he warns.
Dr. Wei also points out that the new rules, in an attempt to
put a cap on runaway resettlement costs, deny funding to
submerged areas to upgrade their industrial enterprises and
infrastructure when they build anew. "This makes the state's
prior commitment to support the rebuilding of the reservoir
area and the reorganization of industry an empty promise,"
he says.
While the authorities were clearly alarmed by the huge
floods along the Yangtze River in 1998, and have given
protection of the environment more prominence in the new
regulations as a result, says Dr. Wei, the new environmental
regulations are too "vague and general" to have much
effect.
The new regulations replace those of the former premier Li
Peng which resulted in widespread corruption of
resettlement funds and environmental problems -- massive
soil erosion, landslides and flooding caused by resettlers
carving out new farms on steep hillsides in the reservoir
area. The ensuing chaos led to the virtual suspension of all
resettlement construction by early 1999. Since then the new
regulations have been under revision, and were approved by
the State Council on Feb. 15 of this year.
According to Dr. Wei's analysis, however, the new
regulations will do little to alleviate the chaos that now
surrounds the world's largest mass migration effort. Of the
1.2 million who will ultimately be displaced by the Three
Gorges dam, 294,000 have already moved, and 265,000
must move by the year 2003 when the reservoir is scheduled
to be filled to the 135 metre mark.
Related articles see:
Dr. Wei's "Comments on the revised Resettlement rules
and regulations of the Three Gorges dam." (English translation)
A reprint of Dr. Wei's article from Strategy and Management,
"Major problems and hidden troubles in the relocation of
Three Gorges Project", May 1999.
Three Gorges Probe, March 23, 2001
"Three Gorges dam petitioners abducted."
South China Morning Post, March 21, 2001
"Three Gorges petitioners 'held by police'."
- END -
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