Rural resettlement and land compensation in flooded areas: The case of the Three Gorges Project, China

Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. 44, No. 1, April 2003ISSN: 1360-7456, pp35–50

© Victoria University of Wellington, 2003. Published by Blackwell Publishing.

Blackwell Publishing108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA.APVAsia Pacific Viewpoint1360-7456© Victoria University of Wellington, 2003441April 2003048Rural resettlement and land compensation in flooded areasAsia Pacific ViewpointOriginal Article00Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong

Rural resettlement and land compensation in

flooded areas: The case of the Three Gorges

Project, China

Tan

Yan and Wang Yi

Qian

Abstract:

This paper provides an evaluation of current arrange-ments made for compensation and resettlement to farmers who willbe displaced by the construction of the Three Gorges Project (TGP)on the Yangtze River. Kaixian County is used as a case study. Underpresent regulations the specific value of peri-urban land is underes-timated, neither cash-in-hand arrangements nor land-for-land swapsare adequate. There are other problems. The availability of suitableland for resettlement is scarce and rarely of equivalent quality. Theinflexibility of the ‘household responsibility system’ contributes tothe problem. It is suggested that some of those facing displacementshould be encouraged to accept resettlement in places at consider-able distance from their current homes and that a more creativeapproach should be taken to the issue of compensation to enablepeople to develop their trade and business skills.

Keywords:

Three Gorges Project (TGP), land inundation, ruralresettlement, peri-urban zone, compensation, land value

For displaced communities, land loss is a major socio-environmental con-sequence of the construction of China’s Three Gorges dam. To compensatefor the peasants’ loss of land, the trade-off can be either in monetary terms orin land-for-land, or a combination of both. The essential problems arisingfrom land compensation are: how to measure land loss, what compensationstandard to adopt, and to whom compensation should be paid. In the reservoirarea, two types of rural settings can be identified: purely rural agrarian areasand mixed peri-urban agricultural zones. There are significant differences inagricultural production, income resources, land-use types, and perceptions of

Authors: Tan Yan, Department of Geographical and Environmental Studies, The Uni-

versity of Adelaide, South Australia 5005, Australia. Email: [email protected]

Wang Yi Qian, West China Development Institute, Sichuan University, Chengdu,

Sichuan 610065, China. Email: [email protected]

Asia Pacific Viewpoint

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© Victoria University of Wellington 2003

people towards displacement and resettlement in these two locational settings.Few studies have paid attention to the category of people who live in the peri-urban zones of a city or township. These people are being compensated andresettled using the same standard measures applied to ‘normal’ rural resettlersand perceive that there is inadequate compensation for their land and otherasset losses. This paper analyses the impacts of the process of displacementand resettlement on this category of rural migrants, the people to be displacedby the Three Gorges Project (TGP). For this purpose, the peri-urban zone inKaixian County of the Chongqing reservoir section was selected as a casestudy area. Section one identifies the particularities of land losses and revealsthe interaction between production measures and location in the peri-urbanareas. In section two, the restrictions on compensation for land losses will bediscussed. Section three analyses the impacts of such compensation on themigrants utilising primary evidence from the field.

LAND LOSS AND ECONOMY IN THE PERI-URBAN ZONE

Kaixian (Figure 1) is a major county in the reservoir area which will be floodedas a result of the Three Gorges dam construction, accounting for 12.7 per centof the overall area to be inundated and 13.1 per cent of the population to berelocated (CWRC, 1997). There are 616 villagers’ groups from 93 administrative

Figure 1. Location of Kaixian County in the Three Gorges reservoir area, China

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Rural resettlement and land compensation in flooded areas


37

villages in 11 towns and townships lying in the submergence region in Kaixian.Approximately 118,200 persons will be relocated by 2009 when the reservoiris expected to be filled, and of these, 64,400 people are defined as rural citizens.The persons to be uprooted make up 4.8 per cent of the gross population or8.2 per cent of the agricultural population in the county. According to adetailed land survey in Kaixian in 1993, the land to be submerged is 4,640 ha,of which 2,740 ha is cropping land and 552 ha orchard groves (CWRC, 2000).Some eighty per cent of the cultivated land to be flooded is flat and fertile inthe river valleys and plains.

The peri-urban zone of Kaixian includes three towns surrounding thecounty seat: Fengle, Hanfeng, and Zhendong (Figure 2: A). In this district, theflooding loss will be serious and the people resettlement task is critical (Table 1).Almost one-third of the total land in the county to be inundated is situatedhere. The people to be displaced are mainly farmers who make up half of thetotal migrants in Kaixian. Hanfeng, where the county seat is situated, will bethe largest town to be submerged in this zone, while Fengle will have thehighest proportion of arable land loss and people displacement (Table 2).

The peri-urban district is the most economically advanced in the county.The section to be flooded in Zhendong is the agricultural products base of thetown. In Fengle, secondary industries, both collectively- and privately-ownedenterprises, are a key component of the economy. A number of rural labourersengage in non-agricultural production, e.g., running businesses and working as

Figure 2. Peri-urban district and case study areas in Kaixian County


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construction and transportation workers and craftsmen. The agriculturalproductivity of Fengle is lower than that of Hanfeng and Zhendong.

Status of land use and production

The four villages selected for the case study (Figure 2: B) are representative ofthe current land-use situation in the peri-urban district to be flooded (Figure 3).Some of these characteristics are considered in what follows.

Diverse economic activity

The peri-urban district is situated on the narrowplains along the banks of three rivers, the Nan, Dong, and Pengxi. Theseplains are suitable for farming with even topography, sufficient water re-sources, fertile soil, and easy accessibility to markets in the county seat. Cashcrop cultivation such as vegetables and fruits (oranges, grapes, and straw-berries) dominate the agricultural production as Figure 3 indicates. Accordingto a 1993 report, potential rural migrants in peri-urban sites had per capitaincomes that were 20 per cent higher than the average incomes of peasants in

Table 1. Inundated land area and population to be displaced in the peri-urban towns of Kaixian

Flooding status Fengle (a)

Hanfeng (b)

Zhendong (c)

(a)+(b)+(c) Total in Kaixian

Cultivated land ha 365.2 505.4 147.2 1,017.8 3,314.6% 11.0 15.2 4.4 30.6 100.0

Rural population displacement

Persons 13,482.0 14,423.0 5,397.4 33,302.0 64,889.0% 20.8 22.2 8.3 51.3 100.0

Peasants Persons 13,259.0 13,611.0 5,084.0 31,954.0 63,351.0% 20.9 21.5 8.0 50.4 100.0

Note: Percentages refer to the whole of Kaixian County’s population.

Source: Calculated from: CWRC (2000: 10–13).

Table 2. Percentages of land loss and migrants within the peri-urban towns, Kaixian

Flooding status Fengle Hanfeng Zhendong

Arable land ha 824.4 1,341.1 1,099.5% 41.4 35.8 11.5

Orchard field ha 12.0 25.5 18.5% 2.5 5.7 7.5

Agricultural production loss RMB million 23 38.9 21.9% 35.1 35.5 29.1

Migrants to be displaced Persons 13,482 14,423 5,397% 51.3 33.3 24.7

Note: Figures and percentages are in regards to each individual town.

Source: Calculated from: CWRC (2000: 10–18).

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the reservoir area (Liang, 1995). In one of the villages, Shuidong, migrants hadan average net income of RMB 1,200 per capita (US$ 1

=

RMB 8.27 approxi-mately). Conversely, host people in the nearby upslope villages, Huanglingand Yinxian, designated to be the resettlement communities to receive themigrants from Shuidong, had an income of less than RMB 500 per head in1992 (Li

et al

., 1995). The current income disparities between migrants andthe local host people have, in fact, broadened.

The main economic activities and thus the main income sources presentlyinclude:

• commerce/business (restaurants, shops);• construction (materials, workers);• transportation (rickshaw or tricycle, motor-cycle, truck transportation);• vegetable/fruit cultivation;• house/store lease (in county and town seats); and• township-owned enterprises.

To a great extent agriculture in general is reliant upon natural endowment,particularly land resources and geographical location. In peri-urban locations

Figure 3. Landuse in the peri-urban settings of KaixianSource: Redrawn from: Kaixian Land Administrative Bureau (1999).


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the agricultural structure is more sophisticated and the commercial values ofthe products are higher than in purely agricultural areas. Due to insufficientfarmland and high density of population, the surplus labourers turn to hobbyfarming, businesses, and other non-agricultural professions such as transport(rickshaw or motorcycle drivers), construction, and crafts. The investigationin Fengle shows that one-third of the migrants are engaged in commerce andbusiness. Some of them have built or purchased houses in the county or town-ship seat that they lease to others for commercial use. There are over 20,000construction workers in the new county seat, taking advantage of the oppor-tunities for employment in project-related lines of work. They are engaged inconstruction of transportation routes and new housing and the installation ofcommunication facilities. These construction workers, mostly carpentersand tillers, are mainly from Fengle. Fengle has the second largest vegetablecultivation base as well, with Hanfeng being the largest. Two villages, Sanzhongand Dalin in Hanfeng, are major vegetable production sites in this peri-urbandistrict. The survey data shows that annual net income ranges from RMB4,000–5,000 per capita for people running business, RMB 3,000–5,000 forpeople engaging in vegetable cultivation, and RMB 7,000–8,000 for tillers inthe peri-urban areas. It is the advantageous location that has enabled the peri-urban district to develop a multi-facetted and vigorous economy.

Capital and labour-intensive agriculture

In all of the four villages in the case study, the main agrarian land-use typesproduce capital-intensive or labour-intensive products: particularly fruits andvegetables (Figure 4). These activities require farmers to invest more incapital, know-how, or labour than is normally necessary to produce graincrops. However, a loss of confidence resulting from the knowledge that they

Figure 4. Landuse in the peri-urban areas of Kaixian.

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will have to leave the land has directly influenced the low level of recentinvestment. Moreover, the land has already been fully cultivated, with fertilesoil and plentiful and cheap irrigation. The substantial capital investmentmade previously has raised land values. Specific investments made by themigrant-interviewees include the introduction of long-term products such asgrapes and oranges, increasing use of organic fertiliser, and the setting up ofsmall and medium-sized greenhouses such as those shown in Figure 5.

Free-time agriculture

Farmers in the peri-urban towns are permitted to leasetheir farmland to other villagers as long as the state grain quota and tax obliga-tions on their contracted land can be fulfilled. Some migrant families pay thelevied grain ratio in order to lease their land to others, moving from farmingto engaging in businesses and other non-agricultural work. But they usuallymaintain their land tenure rights rather than renounce them. In VillagerGroup 5 (see Note in Table 3) of Longshi village, Zhendong, eighty per centof the 200 migrants are engaged in businesses and craftwork. Some migrantsare even ignorant of farming. Because of inadequate land allotment farmerscannot be entirely absorbed by agriculture, thereby producing a surplus labourforce in the densely populated peri-urban areas. Most migrant respondents statethat they do not want to hold much land. They think that per capita holding of0.02 ha is enough to provide for their basic maintenance. This perception of a

Figure 5. Vegetable base in Shuidong village of Fengle, Kaiixan. This photograph shows that migrants have invested much capital and labour to home-made small and

medium-sized greenhouses


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suitable size for a family landholding is different from that of the migranthouseholds in the purely rural areas, for instance, migrant households in Qukoutown, 14 km south of the county seat. Although grain cropping is not the mainincome resource for most migrant families, land has played a substantial role,both for basic subsistence and as fundamental security. Further, there is noland market to transfer land use rights in most counties of China. Consequently,peasants choose to keep their land use rights and engage in farming as a part-timeoccupation.

COMPENSATION FOR LAND LOSS: SOME INADEQUACIES

The word ‘value’ is imprecise in its basic form, and can have many meaningsand be used in many different ways (Ring, 1970). Practically, compensationcan never perfectly indicate the value or worth of land. The factors affectingland values are not easily quantified (Doll

et al.

, 1983). However, compensationmay approximate the probable price or value of land. In western economics,the variables influencing the value of farmland include land earnings or rents(Smith, 1952; Clark, 1973), asset appreciation and the expectation of inflation(Tostlebe, 1957; Grove, 1960), technical change and enlargement demand(Reinsel, 1973), farm programmes (Harriss, 1975), financing and taxation(Beneke, 1952; Adams, 1977). Another insightful perspective on compensa-tion for asset losses suggests that the basis of compensation must not be simplyvalued as an economic exchange but the totality of the rights that are relin-quished or negatively affected by projects (Bartolome

et al.

, 2000).The World Bank, the pioneer institution working on systematic operations

for forced resettlement produced by development projects, requires that allaffected assets (land and structures) be compensated for at their replacementcost, which is equivalent to the amount required to replace the asset in itsexisting condition (World Bank, 1990, 1997). In line with the Bank’s rules,the concept of land has a broad context, covering anything growing on orpermanently affixed to land like crops and buildings. In reality, each valueor price of land is different and even similarly situated land may have vastlydifferent current uses and different future use potential. Land should have adifferent value or price according to its spatial location, soil fertility, human-influenced fertilities deriving from mechanical and capital investment,water provision, irrigation facilities, and inputs of the labour force.

However, compensation for land in the peri-urban settings in this case studyis seriously at odds with its value in the reservoir area. Some losses in land aretangible, and can be compensated accordingly through disbursing resettlementfunds, redistributing farmland, or arranging industrial jobs for the affectedmigrants. Yet there are intangible losses relating to resettlement, such as theloss of local socio-economic networks, advantageous geographical locations,and past investments. The Chinese government has adopted a strategy tocompensate land losses of migrants that combines compensation in cash (forthe attached trees, orchards, bamboos, and other green plants cultivated onland) and in kind, land provided by the resettlement communities. Often, the

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cash compensation is inadequate, especially for land in peri-urban locations.Furthermore, an equivalent quality and similarity in the locations of land inthe recipient areas is not always provided.

Standards of compensation for land loss

The compensation for the resettlement of the TGP falls into three sections: theproduction resettlement fund (

shengchan anzhi fei

), livelihood resettlementfund (

shenghuo anzhi fei

), and house-rebuilding fund (

fangwu huanjian fei

).The first is compensation for land to be flooded by the reservoir, constitutingsix categories of land: cultivated land, fruit orchards, forestry land, fishingponds, residential land, firewood and grass land (CWRC, 1997). This compen-sation is specially provided for the eligible ‘productively resettled population’(

shengchan anzhi renkou

), meaning people who will lose land and need to beprovided with land or jobs to restore production. The arable land is composedof rice paddy, dry land, and vegetable gardens. Orchards are listed separately.The compensation standards are based on the quantity and quality of land tobe submerged in a given region at county level. The amount of cash compen-sation for land varies according to area and resettlement category, rangingfrom RMB 6,000 to 8,000 per capita. The average compensation for land lossis RMB 7,000 per head in the overall reservoir area (CWRC, 1994). The pro-duction resettlement fund constitutes the major portion of the whole packageof compensation and funds for rural resettlement.

The total compensation for rural resettlement in Kaixian is RMB 540.1697million (as at May 1993), accounting for 15 per cent of the gross compensa-tion for displacement and resettlement in Kaixian. Besides rural resettlement,other resettlement involves removal of urban migrants, relocation of industrialfactories and mining enterprises, construction of the new county seat andtownship settings, and replacement of inundated infrastructure. The compensa-tion for rural land, excluding attached houses, infrastructure, and scatteredfruit orchards and trees is RMB 241.8752 million, making up 44.8 per cent ofthe compensation package for rural resettlement. On average the compensa-tion for land and attached trees and orchards is RMB 52,128 per hectare inKaixian, disregarding the land attributes at different locations – purely agrarianareas or peri-urban areas.

A big issue in regards to this compensation for rural land flooding is that itdoes not differentiate between the population carrying capacity of land in thedifferent rural regions. Moreover, investment in land is not taken into accountin the cash compensation for land loss. Migrants in peri-urban areas stronglyargue that compensation for their farmland is inadequate. The losses sufferedby this category of rural migrants living adjacent to urban areas are heavierthan those in purely agricultural areas further away from county seats. For thisgroup of migrants, what they will lose is not only tangible assets but alsointangible wealth. These migrants have a variety of potential income resourcesderiving from their advantageous locations, which include stable agriculturalproduct markets and potential employment opportunities. There is only about


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0.02 ha of farmland per capita in the case study villages of the peri-urbantowns. Therefore, to engage in high value-added agriculture, people haveinvested much capital and labour in order to enhance agricultural productivityand land fertility. Amounts of RMB 90,000–150,000/ha have often beeninvested to develop large greenhouses for vegetable or fruit production. Anaverage of RMB 15,000/ha including plastic, seed and fertiliser has beeninvested to develop small greenhouses for vegetable cultivation. The migrants,as vegetable farmers, strongly condemn as unfair the system whereby com-pensation for their land is calculated by adopting the same criteria as that forgrain cropping land.

More importantly, the cash compensation criteria are lower than the stand-ards set forth in the Land Management Law, issued in 1986 and amended bythe National Congress in 1999, which is a fundamental law setting out thecompensation criteria for land and other assets losses. According to the LandManagement Law (1999), there are specific regulations on land requisitioncompensation in the 47

th

Article of Chapter 5. It stipulates that compensationfor cultivated land requisition should include three components: compensa-tion for land, funds for resettlement, and compensation for attached assetsand green shoots of grain on land. The amount for the first item is 6–10 timesthe derived land productivity, which is the average production per hectare inthe preceding three years. The amount for the second item is 4–6 times thederived land productivity, subject to a maximum of 15 times the derived landproductivity. The combined amount of the former two items is set at a maxi-mum of 30 times the derived land productivity. Unfortunately, when estab-lishing the compensation standard in the early 1990s, ‘compensation for land’and ‘fund for resettlement’ were lumped together. Consequently, the grosscompensation for arable land was RMB 40,515/ha, which was only 3.5 timesthe derived land productivity, and the average compensation for floodedorange orchards was RMB 86,445/ha, at an even smaller ratio of 2.3 times.

Who should keep the production resettlement fund?

In compliance with the resettlement regulations (SCC, 1993, 2001), cashcompensation for flooded land is not handed over to migrants but to the recipientcommunities or individual units, e.g., villages in rural areas and enterprises ina city or a town, which receive migrants.

Rural migrants have less employment security and derive fewer benefits fromresettlement compared to urban migrants. Compensation is a major meansfor migrants to restore their livelihood and re-establish their production afterdisplacement. Most respondents in the case study villages, when interviewed,replied that migrants themselves should keep the production resettlementfund. They are hoping to make their own decisions on investment plans andproduction arrangements. In comparison, those migrants in peri-urban areashave higher education levels, more market-oriented economic views, and moreversatile skills than those in purely agrarian areas as a result of frequent inter-action with urban society. They hope to hold all the production resettlement

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compensation and then resettle by themselves. If migrants cannot get full cashcompensation for their land, they suggest that they could alternatively:

• renounce a part of their land-holding rights in their future resettlementlocation and claw-back a proportion of the production resettlement fund;

• transfer the agricultural household registration status of aged migrants tourban status;

• arrange non-agricultural employment for skilled craftsmen;• provide preferential provisions and conditions to help migrants restore

businesses; and• assist in necessary production skills training, especially training in new

skills that are in demand in the regional and local economy. Facilitatingsuch capacity building amongst women is especially important.

Impacts of the household responsibility system on land compensation

The Land Management Law (1986, 1999) states that land in urban areasbelongs to the state and land in rural areas and in peri-urban areas belongs tothe collectives. Article 14 points out that collectively owned land at the villagelevel should be allocated to the villagers belonging to the collective withrespect to the number of members or the labour force in a family. This egalitarianland distribution is what sets China apart from the other developing countries.The principle of land distribution was derived from collective land ownership,which was established during the 1950s and the 1960s, as a result of thecentralised and planned socialist economy. Farmland in a village was ownedby all of its members collectively. Every member had equal claim on landproperty rights. Since 1978, the ‘Household Responsibility System’ (

jiatingchengbao zerenzhi

) has been the nationwide statutory pattern for agriculturalland tenure in China, which abandoned collectivisation given its poor track-record (Lin, 1992). The modern theory on land states that land ownership isjust one of the components of property rights. Other components include therights to consume, to obtain income from and to alienate assets (Barzel, 1989).The ownership of land in rural China is clearly laid-out but the property rightsof farmers are unclear. Villagers collectively own land but farmers use itindividually. In theory, farmers should have an exclusive use right. In practise,their rights to consume and to obtain income from land are undermined by theState’s land requisition system and distorted prices. Furthermore, farmers areusually forbidden to transfer their land use right. Incomplete land propertyrights directly affect the welfare of migrants and other farmers. Compensationfor land losses is institutionally incomplete and underestimated, especially, asnoted previously, because the investment in land is usually excluded fromthe cash compensation. The collective ownership of land means that thecompensation for land loss is disbursed to the communities that receivemigrants. These villages are accountable for land adjustment and allocation tomigrants.


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IMPACTS OF COMPENSATION FOR LAND ON RURAL RESETTLEMENT

Staying in the origin areas

The government’s proposed resettlement schemes are out of step with themigrants’ preferences. The investigation in village Dalin of Hanfeng finds thatnearly two thirds of 526 migrant households to be displaced would not like tomove out until 2008 (see Tables 3, 4 and 5). Over ninety per cent of migrantfamilies prefer self-employed resettlement by themselves, staying and livingin the new county seat or its outskirts rather than moving out of the countythrough any other resettlement schemes.

The land-for-land strategy is a significant part of compensation for land losswith the main process being to settle rural migrants in upland areas. Givenpoor land potential upland resettlement is likely to be environmentallyunsustainable (Tan

et al

., 2002). In this context, distant resettlement has beensuggested. Most migrants in the peri-urban towns will have to be moved outto Sichuan, a neighbouring province, via the Government-Organised Distant

Table 3. Villager groups and migrants surveyed in Dalin village, Hanfeng Town, Kaixian

Villager Group

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Total

Number of households 107 63 62 89 16 98 91 526People to be moved out:

Agricultural population 320 177 149 203 51 324 292 1,516Non-agricultural population 37 18 42 51 0 8 7 163Total 357 195 191 254 51 332 299 1,679

Note: An administrative village consists of several villagers’ groups, where each group consists ofvillagers residing in one residential cluster.

Source: The author’s survey in Dalin village of Hanfeng town, Kaixian, in collaboration with theResettlement Office of Hanfeng town in 2001.

Table 4. Migrant households’ preferences for resettlement schemes

Resettlement schemes Villager Group

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Total

Government-organised distant resettlement 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 2Moving to non-flooded counties in Chongqing 0 2 0 0 0 0 1 3Living with relatives or friends 2 0 3 3 0 2 1 11Near resettlement 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 2Self-employed settlement in new county seat 105 61 55 70 15 96 88 490

Source: The author’s survey in Dalin village of Hanfeng town, Kaixian, in collaboration with theResettlement Office of Hanfeng Town in 2001.

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Resettlement (GODR) scheme. The key issue for land-for-land operations inboth the near resettlement and distant resettlement approaches is that the landprovided by the receiving communities is not equivalent to the quality and thelocation of land in the sending peri-urban districts. For instance, migrantsfrom Fengle resettled in Zigong and Luzhou prefectures through the GODRscheme in 2001 argue strongly that the land in their current resettlement sitesis not as fertile as in their former location. Furthermore, although they havebeen resettled in township settings they remain some distance away fromcounty sites or the prefectural capitals.

Delay of displacement

The GODR scheme comprised of two stages: a trial resettlement on a smallscale in 2000 followed by a massive removal in 2001–02. There were 30,287migrants identified for displacement within the three towns, of which 2,679people were resettled in Deyang prefecture, the trial resettlement location inSichuan, and other counties in the middle Sichuan basin in 2000–01. Themigrants interviewed in the peri-urban areas perceived all the resettlementlocations in Sichuan in 2002 as ill-provided for with underdeveloped econo-mies, infertile land, and disadvantageous locations. By early 2002, the numberof people who voluntarily registered to move out was only 1,532, or 58 percent of the targeted migrants for the year. It is notable that among the migrantsregistered, 602 people selected the scheme of ‘Living with Relatives orFriends’ (

tou qing kao you

). In Sanzhong village of Hanfeng, there are 2,007migrants to be moved but the number of those voluntarily registered accountsfor less than one per cent. In Villager Group 8 of this village, only 6 house-holds among the 147 migrant households have registered to move out. Sim-ilarly, in Villager Group 7, only 3 out of the 110 households have registeredto move out. Most migrants refuse to accept the resettlement locations in theeastern hilly region of Sichuan. Insufficient land quality and location is the

Table 5. Migrant households’ preferred year of displacement

Year Villager Group

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Total

2001 2 1 2 0 0 0 2 72002 0 0 1 0 1 1 5 82003 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 12004 0 3 2 0 0 1 7 132005 0 19 6 9 1 4 15 542006 3 9 14 3 1 1 12 432007 3 5 8 7 0 1 10 342008 97 23 29 54 12 88 43 346

Source: The author’s survey in Dalin village of Hanfeng town, Kaixian, in collaboration with theResettlement Office of Hanfeng Town in 2001.


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dominant factor resulting in resettlement delays. Aside from these things,further reasons include:

• the relatively high current living standard of the migrants in the peri-urbansites of the existing areas;

• a belief that sacrifices have been made for the progress of the nation andtherefore a feeling that better terms ought to be provided;

• ineffective implementation of a less-than-ideal distant resettlement plancoupled with empty and exaggerated promises; and

• over-optimistic propaganda by the media on the positive and favourableaspects of relocation, resulting in unrealistic expectations among migrants.

Among the migrant households investigated, eighty per cent hold two kindsof expectations: (1) similar or better conditions in the resettlement locationsas compared to their current locations: close proximity to county seats, con-venient access to urban sites, fertile soil suitable for vegetable and/or fruitcultivation, and essential facilities and infrastructure in good condition; and(2) similar favourable resettlement conditions as in the trial resettlement phaseto Sichuan in 2000. During the trial resettlement phase, migrants were allo-cated favourable sites in Deyang prefecture, but as more locations were takenup, subsequent migrants relocated in 2001–02 were given increasingly lowerquality sites. Migrants expect the governments in both the sending and receiv-ing areas to honour the national resettlement policy and the promises made inprevious agreements.

CONCLUSION

The characteristics of land inundation, land-use, and productive activity inperi-urban areas are different from those in purely agricultural areas. Compen-sation for land loss should take into account extensive investments made inthe farmland, advantageous location, and broad income potentials derivedfrom more advantageous peri-urban sites. An understanding of differentgroups of migrants under different settings, especially their socio-economicand demographic characteristics, is essential for setting forth a compensationstandard for land and other asset losses and identifying the most suitable reset-tlement options for the affected people.

Compensation for the loss of land usually takes the form of a combinationof monetary payment and land for land reimbursement. One of the mostintractable problems in rural resettlement in general has been arriving at a fairlevel, in terms of both land and cash, which achieves equivalence in terms ofthe locations which are abandoned. This has prevented migrants from movingto the resettlement sites as quickly and smoothly as planned. Inadequate orinequitable compensation for the break down of the existing organisation ofproduction and the loss of multi-livelihood resources in the peri-urban areas isa critical issue for this category of migrants. Involuntary displacement, especiallyvia the distant resettlement approach, will cause migrants to lose their existing

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social organisation of production, personal networks, resource allocations, andan entire complex of rights that are affiliated with their original land. Due tothe increasingly limited availability of arable land it is important that theauthorities formulate sustainable alternatives.

Self-employment schemes are welcomed and accepted by most migrants inthe peri-urban areas. On one hand, land provision is a necessary option thatmust be available to individual migrants that are dependent on land-basedlivelihoods and production systems. On the other hand, many farmers havealready had the experience of participating in a wide range of non-farm activ-ities. Such people often move between their ‘normal’ land-based occupationsand temporary non-farming work. Therefore, the transition of the resettlementstrategy from land-based agricultural resettlement to one which partly permitseligible migrants, often with higher education levels and multiple skills, toresettle themselves by self-employment or

voluntary

distant resettlement, maybe a better means of facilitating more sustainable and equitable compensation.

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Documents

Rural resettlement and land compensation in flooded areas: The case of the Three Gorges Project, China