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Involuntary Resettlement in Rural China: The Local View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Elisabeth J. Croll
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Extract

Involuntary resettlement programmes have not only become an increasingly important and separate component of development projects within China but the movement of more than a million persons within the Three Gorges project has generated a new international interest in Chinese resettlement experiences. With a view to examining prior resettlement projects in China, this article is based on interviews with national and provincial bodies responsible for resettlement and on field investigations of linear resettlement attached to the Jiqing highway in Shandong province and of reservoir resettlement within a hydro-electric power project in Guangxi Autonomous Region.

Type
Report from the Field
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 158 , June 1999 , pp. 468 - 483
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1999

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References

1. These field investigations were undertaken as a contribution to a much larger study undertaken by Lee Travers and funded by the Overseas Development Agency of Great Britain and the World Bank. I would like to thank Lee Travers for his generous help in arranging and discussing the field trips. I would also like to thank the Ministries of Water Resources, Energy and Communications, the Highway Office in Jinan, Shandong and the Hydro-electric Power Bureau in Nanning, Guangxi for their help, and all the local cadres and villagers for their co-operation in studying resettlement.

2. It is estimated that between 1950 and 1989 a total of 17.6 million persons have been resettled as a result of transport and reservoir development projects. There is frequent confusion in the calculation of numbers affected (land only) and numbers relocated (housing only or housing and land) which can make qualitative assessments and quantitative comparisons a difficult exercise. For a fuller historical and contemporary study see China: Involuntary Resettlement (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 06 1993).Google Scholar

3. In the resettlement office of the Guangxi Hydroelectric Bureau 70% of the 23 persons had received some training and one was a recent graduate of the Nanjing Ocean and River University where he had majored in reservoir resettlement.

4. Once or twice an “economist” was included in the implementation team but this term was used loosely to denote accounting skills rather than any other capacities.

5. The documents were the “Regulations on the Requisition of Land for State Construction” promulgated by the State Council on 14 May 1982 and further clarified by a document entitled “Elucidation of the Regulations on the Requisition of Land for State Construction” issued by the State Planning Commission, the Ministry of Agriculture, 9 June 1983.

6. Thus the original sum (37,000 yuan) allocated in 1986 to compensation was raised over the five years of allocation to 129,000 yuan. Where extra land had been borrowed from the village for the period of construction, the village was compensated by an annual sum from the construction company with the proviso that land borrowed be returned in the same condition.

7. Many young persons interviewed now very much regretted not having stayed on in education to reach junior-middle school standard.