Damming China’s rivers to expand its cities: the urban livelihoods of rural people displaced by the Three Gorges Dam

ABSTRACT

Over the next two decades, China, the country with the world’s largest urban population, is orchestrating the urbanization of some 300 million rural people. In its National New-Type Urbanization Plan (2014) the State Council has outlined a range of strategies to grow its cities not least of which is rural-to-urban migration. This plan will have significant effects on other types of displacement, particularly, the forced displacement and resettlement of those living in the path of large dams. This paper reviews what is known about New-Type Urbanization Approach to Reservoir Resettlement. Then, based on a longitudinal study of 145 resettled households at the Three Gorges Dam, the livelihood effects of rural-to-urban resettlement are unpacked to provide lessons for its use in advancing urbanization. It finds that rural-to-urban resettlers have lower incomes than their urban-to-urban and rural-to-rural counterparts, and higher rates of food and income insecurity.

KEYWORDS:

• Three Gorges Dam
• forced displacement
• urbanization
• China
• rural-to-urban resettlement

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges Dr Andrew van Hulten for statistical analysis and comments on previous drafts. The author also thanks Professor Duan Yuefang of China Three Gorges University and Johanna Higgs of La Trobe University for assistance in the field.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. 1 USD = approximately 7 RMB.

2. Although the number of landless peasants in cities has also risen as tens of millions of Chinese farmers have lost their land to urbanization in the past two decades.

3. RFDR is an adaption of the acronym commonly used by scholars studying involuntary resettlement – DFDR, Development-Forced Displacement and Resettlement.

4. All personal communications are anonymous.

5. The data collected “before resettlement” was based on the interviewees’ recollections of life before displacement. The data are not as reliable as that collected about livelihoods in 2003 and 2011; however, it is suggestive of how the interviewee perceived their life before resettlement.

6. Of the non-respondents in 2012, 9 households had moved away permanently and only returned at Spring Festival; 12 households were not at home but still resided in the same house as in 2004 survey; 3 householders had passed away and any family members had moved on; 27 households provided no contact details in their 2004 survey as they wished to remain anonymous; 2 households refused to participate due to illness.

7. Decree 126 – Clause 9: The rural resettlers should devote major efforts to develop agriculture; develop reclaimable land; reform low-yield land; and build high yield land, economic gardens, forestry, animal husbandry, fisheries, etc.

8. The final ship lock was completed in 2015.

9. Yichang is the second largest city in Hubei province. The dam did not directly displace Yichang City residents, which is downstream of the construction. As such, Yichang City provides a good reference point for assessing whether income growth in the study area was exceptional relative to regional economic performance.

10. Compensation packages consisted of nine items: farmland based on the average annual output of three years prior to assessment, housing and subsidiary installations, construction expenses for fundamental facilities, water storage structures, rebuilding expenses, moving expenses, fruit trees, a transition period and other undisclosed items (TGPCC, 2001).

11. This comment reflects the demographics of the sample – the proportion of household members over 60 years old in 2011 is higher in the urban-to-urban sample (20.8%), than among the rural-to-urban households (17.7%) and the rural-to-rural households (16.6%).

12. The ongoing importance of land after resettlement is supported by my analysis of the livelihoods of the rural-to-rural cohort in this study (Wilmsen, Forthcoming), which showed that rural-to-rural households that increased their farmland after resettlement and supplemented their agricultural pursuits with non-farm work were more likely to grow their incomes between 2003 and 2011 than those that did not.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council under Grant DE120101037.