February 1995 Vol. 7, No. 1

THE THREE GORGES DAM IN CHINA: Forced Resettlement, Suppression of Dissent and Labor Rights Concerns









I . Summary

In April 1992, China's National People's Congress (npc) formally approved the "Resolution on theConstruction of the Yangtze River Three Gorges Project," marking the conclusion of decades of controversy within

the Chinese leadership in favor of supporters of the world's biggest-ever river dam project. Despite strenuous

government attempts to muzzle the debate, almost one-third of the normally compliant npc delegates, in an

unprecedented display of legislative dissent, either abstained or cast opposition votes. The following year, a pilot

project for the resettlement of an estimated 1.1 to 1.6 million inhabitants of the proposed 600-kilometer-long

reservoir area drew to a close and, in early 1994, the full resettlement program began in earnest. By mid-year,

excavation and preparation of the dam's foundations were underway at Sandouping, the chosen dam site just

downstream of the world-famous Three Gorges scenic area; in December, Premier Li Peng formally declared the

project open. The Chinese government has offered overseas manufacturers US$3 billion worth of machinery and

equipment contracts and will reportedly seek an additional US$5 billion or so in overseas funding for the project.

International tendering has already begun for a preliminary range of dam-related construction contracts. A showcase

for China's "opening and reform" policy, the dam is a model for how lack of transparency and debate, authoritarian

decision-making and underlying unfair labor conditions can taint an ambitious enterprise.

Publicly, the authorities have assured China's citizens and the rest of the world that the Three Gorges dam

will be environmentally safe and economically viable, and that it will even contribute toward social stability and

prosperity among the enormous number of people who are to be uprooted. Privately, a very different outcome is now

being anticipated by the government. As two "internal-use-only" documents recently prepared by China's public

security authorities and obtained by Human Rights Watch/Asia make clear, intensive contingency plans are now

being drawn up by the police to deal with the widespread social turmoil ranging from large-scale peaceful protest

actions to mass pitched battles with the authorities that is expected to ensue from the Three Gorges project as a

whole and from the population transfer program in particular. According to one of the reports, "Already, in January

1993, one armed fight involving over 300 persons occurred in the vicinity of the dam." (See Appendices I and II for

full texts of the documents.)

Throughout the protracted debate over the Three Gorges dam, numerous objections and challenges to the

project have been mounted by environmentalists, social scientists, geologists, sedimentation experts, hydraulic power

engineers, military planners and other Chinese specialists concerned about the dam's likely economic, social, political

and national security consequences. These have received short shrift from top government leaders, in particular

Premier Li Peng, who seem intent on denying a public forum to opponents of the monumental project and on forcing

it through both as a means of symbolizing China's fast-emerging "superpower" status and as a vehicle for personal

glorification. Since 1956, two generations of Three Gorges dam opponents from Li Rui, formerly Mao Zedong's

personal secretary and a vice-minister of water resources, to Dai Qing, a former Guangming Daily journalist who

in February 1989 published an anthology of articles opposing the dam have been discriminated against, dismissed

from office, publicly humiliated, branded as "rightists" and sometimes sent to prison for their dissenting views. Yet

it is often those critical voices which are most urgently needed during the kind of rapid modernization on which

China has embarked.

Internationally, in line with an evolving scientific and public-opinion consensus against the construction of

any more river-dam "megaprojects" such as Egypt's Aswan Dam and the Narmada project in India, foreign

governments and international lending agencies began, after 1989, to reverse their earlier stance of qualified support

for the project. The dramatic expansion of the Chinese economy during the past two years, however, has again altered

the general picture: a headlong rush by Western businesses to participate in China's emerging "socialist market

economy" has brought Western governments under increasing political pressure to signal backing for the Three

Gorges dam. In September 1994, for example, the White House solicited U.S. government interagency submissions

in what some believed could be the prelude to a full-scale resumption of U.S.-China commercial cooperation on the

dam-building project.

One crucial aspect of the Three Gorges dam project which until now has received little public attention is

that of the project's potential for causing major human rights violations in the proposed reservoir region. The present

report focuses upon two main issues of concern: first, the Chinese government's continuing suppression of dissenting

viewpoints on the Three Gorges dam including a decades-long tight restriction on public information and debate,

extending most recently to the actual arrests of political activists opposed to the dam's construction; and second, the

human rights issues that surround the forced resettlement of more than one million current and future inhabitants of

the Three Gorges reservoir area and the rights of workers on the dam site.

China's longstanding restrictions on public access to information, debate and decision-making about large

dam-construction projects have had fatal consequences in the past. An example was the catastrophic collapse in

August 1975 of two large water-conservancy projects in Henan Province, the Banqiao dam and the Shimantan dam.

Hitherto almost entirely unreported beyond the confines of China's top party leadership and elite hydrological circles,

this event represented by far the largest known dam disaster in human history. In the resulting floods, famine and

health epidemics, fatalities amounted to anywhere between 86,000 (the government's internally-released figure) and

230,000 (an estimate produced by eight senior Chinese critics of the Three Gorges project). As Appendix III of this

report reveals, the Banqiao and Shimantan dam collapses were to a large extent man-made disasters, resulting from

flawed water-control policies. Overall lack of government transparency in the dam-building process has contributed

to a current situation whereby, according to Dai Qing, "More than one third of China's dams should be considered

unsafe." The most recent dam collapse, that at Gonghe in Qinghai Province, occurred in August 1993 with the loss

of more than 300 lives.

The two provinces most affected by the Three Gorges dam, Sichuan and Hubei, both contain numerous

political and religious prisoners held in China's laogai system of penal labor camps. Since these camps account for

a high proportion of the country's industrial output in the construction and building-materials sectors (see Labor

Rights section and Appendix IV below), prospective foreign investors in the Three Gorges project should take

systematic precautions against any inadvertent involvement with China's highly abusive laogai network.

In this report, Human Rights Watch/Asia calls on the Chinese government to provide full access to

information about the proposed resettlement program to those affected and permit the latter to freely express their

opinions through a process of consultation with authorities at the provincial and central level. The government should

establish a mechanism for investigating allegations of abuse and allow unhampered access of international human

rights and humanitarian organizations to the affected areas, including to prisons, to verify that complaints of abuses

are being adequately addressed and that no one is detained for speaking out against any aspect of government policy

concerned with the dam. The government should also provide full information about the legal status and whereabouts

of those already known to have been arrested in connection with protests against the dam, and should immediately

release anyone detained merely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association.

Human Rights Watch/Asia also calls on foreign governments to insist on human rights impact assessment

studies of the project before providing any financing, goods or services to facilitate the dam's construction. Private

foreign investors should insist on firm and verifiable guarantees from the Chinese government that human rights will

be respected before committing themselves to the project.

II. Muzzling the Critics

First mooted in 1919 by Sun Yat-sen, the plan to dam the Yangtze River at the Three Gorges was revived

by the Nationalist government in 1932, and an initial design proposal was drawn up by a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

mission to the region in 1944; three years later, escalating civil war led to the project's termination. Debate on the

Three Gorges project was reopened by Mao in 1953 and received fresh impetus the following year after the worst

floods for a century hit the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze, killing an estimated 30,000 people. In 1955,

Soviet experts were called in to provide technical and planning assistance on the dam project and soon thereafter an

overall coordinating body, the Yangtze Valley Planning Office (yvpo), was established. During the next several

decades, uncertainty over the fate of the Three Gorges region brought a central government freeze on virtually all

capital investment in the area, with the result that it is now one of the most underdeveloped and impoverished parts

of China.

The first expression of open dissent came in early 1957, at the height of the short-lived "Hundred Flowers"

movement. From June onwards, critics of the Three Gorges Dam project, including leading opponents within the

yvpo, were among several hundreds of thousands persecuted during the ensuing "Anti-Rightist" movement for

having spoken out against government policies earlier that year. In January 1958, however, Li Rui prevailed upon

Mao to delay construction of the dam; and during the Cultural Revolution decade, the project was suspended while

China prepared for possible warfare with the Soviet Union. But in 1970, construction of the Gezhouba dam located

just downstream of the Three Gorges dam site and originally conceived as forming the second phase of the

megaproject was approved by the leadership. (The first attempt at building the dam had to be torn down because

of poor design and construction work; it was finally completed in 1989 at a cost of several times the original budget.)

Purged during the Great Leap Forward, Li Rui returned to office in 1979, just as debate was again resuming on the

Three Gorges project.

The pro-dam lobby encountered three main rounds of public opposition during the 1980s. The first was

during 1985-86, when a delegation of senior experts from the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference

(cppcc), led by the ninety-two-year-old veteran economist and leading dam opponent Sun Yueqi, conducted a five-

week field trip to the proposed dam site. Upon their return, the seven experts issued a report to the cppcc

recommending that the project "should not go ahead in the short term." While the initiative temporarily succeeded

in slowing the project's impetus, Sun's comments on an incident that occurred two years later, in June 1988,

illustrated the central authorities' more customary mode of dealing with opposition viewpoints:

At an enlarged meeting of the Leading Group for the Assessment of the Three Gorges Project, I gave two

long speeches on the subject along with other members of the cppcc. Although many different views were

expressed at the meeting, nothing appeared in the summary of the proceedings, except the names of the

speakers. Some experts presented different points of view, but none was accepted and the assessment reports

on various subjects were adopted by the majority. The structure of meetings only reinforced "the single

opinion" of the Ministry of Water Resources and Electric Power.

As Li Rui later explained, the membership of the "Leading Group" and its various specialist committees had

been carefully stacked by pro-dam officials:

Frankly speaking, the way evidence was put forward to decide on this project was neither scientific nor

democratic. What they did was to shape teams of over 400 experts to gather evidence. But over 90 percent

of the leaders, including the experts who composed the teams, were already in favor of constructing the dam.

Moreover, these people were all under the control of the top leadership. Very few opponents of the project

were allowed to join the teams. Most were kept outside.

Another surge in public opposition to the dam occurred in 1987, with the publication in Hunan Province of

a collection of scholarly articles titled "On Macro-Decision Making in the Three Gorges Project." The book, the

list of whose contributors read like a "who's who" of expert dissident opinion on the dam, was followed in March

1989 and in 1992 by two further volumes by the same editors. The government withdrew the first two from

circulation after June 1989 and the third was approved for publication only in "internal" (restricted-circulation) form.

As Tian Fang, one of the editors of the series, remarked in 1993, "When I edited this [series] I was slandered and

reviled. I'm seventy-five years old but until last year my hair was black; now it's turning white. I feel very anxious

about the Three Gorges project. It is China's misfortune, a catastrophic tragedy." He continued,

When we published our first book on macro-policy making on the Three Gorges, the head of the Ministry

of Water Resources and Electric Power, Qian Zhengying, brought it to the attention of Premier Li Peng. He

went to the chairman of the State Planning Commission's standing committee and told him to inform me that

the leadership was not willing to publish the book and to demand that I stop it from happening. Even if I

published the book, he said, he would buy up all the copies to ensure that it could not be distributed.

The last round of open dissent on the Three Gorges dam before the Tiananmen Square crackdown occurred

in February 1989 with the publication of Yangtze! Yangtze!, a collection of scholarly anti-dam articles edited by Dai

Qing and released to coincide with key sessions of the cppcc and National People's Congress (npc) at which the

future of the Three Gorges dam was due to be decided. The effect of the book, which was published independently

with funds contributed by prominent Chinese intellectuals, exceeded all expectations: under pressure from

assembled delegates largely influenced by the book, the State Council decided to postpone the Three Gorges project

for a further five years. (A petition by 272 npc delegates around one tenth of the total calling for the project to

be postponed until the twenty-first century, however, was excluded from the formal list of conference proposals.)

With the June 4 massacre and its repressive aftermath, the mood of new liberalism evaporated: Dai Qing was

denounced by the official media, secretly detained by police in July and then held for the next ten months in isolation

at Qincheng Prison. In September 1989, two members of the Leading Group for the Assessment of the Three Gorges

Project submitted a letter to the State Planning Commission attacking both Dai and the editors of the 1987 Hunan

volume:

Yangtze! Yangtze!...advocates bourgeois liberalization. It is a book opposing [Deng Xiaoping's] Four

Cardinal Principles, and a book that has provided opinions for the chaos and riots. Comrades Lin Hua and

Tian Fang of your unit were also involved in this action."

As Tian later observed, "After the Tiananmen incident, the Ministry of Power wrote a letter to the leaders

of the State Planning Commission slandering us and falsely accusing our [second] book of being linked to Dai Qing.

They said it had created arguments in favor of the counterrevolutionary turmoil and they asked the leadership to

investigate us."

In October 1989, the government formally banned Yangtze! Yangtze! and ordered the Guizhou-based

publisher of the book to recall the remaining 30,000 copies and destroy them immediately. Although eventually

released from prison, Dai Qing was later expelled from her post on the Guangming Daily and barred from publishing

any further works in China. Opposition to the Three Gorges megaproject was now effectively stigmatized by the

authorities as amounting to direct involvement in the "bourgeois-liberal plot" that had produced the Tiananmen

Square protests; not surprisingly, no more anti-dam voices were heard in public for the next several years. The chief

political beneficiary of the June 4 crackdown, Premier Li Peng, had long been the principal advocate for an early start

to the Three Gorges project. He thus reaped a double advantage from the crackdown, and by early 1992 he was ready

to push his favorite project through to fruition.

As noted above, the npc gave its formal seal of approval to the Three Gorges project in April 1992 albeit

in the face of an unprecedented level of opposition from the delegates. That opposition was based on extensive

technical and environmental information that had been acquired by legislators despite systematic government efforts

to suppress it and to stigmatize dissent over the project as indicating ulterior political motives. Technical data

supplied by a wide range of experts were ignored by officials or arbitrarily excluded from the legislative debate, and

controls on free expression precluded any properly-informed discussion. Tian Fang, for example, tried to distribute

copies of his three-volume Hunan anthology among the delegates. However, "When the leaders found out about this

they said it would be impossible for me to do so....The first restriction they made was that I couldn't give the books

out until the conference was finished; the second was that I could not enter the conference hall. `These books of yours

are not helpful to the security of the npc session,' they said. This was simply laughable."

An npc delegate opposed to the dam, Huang Shunxing, later elaborated upon how the meeting was

conducted:

They set up various obstacles to my learning about the project and were unwilling to provide the most basic

data on the assessment....Each delegate was presented with several pounds of materials supporting the

project. Yet the materials outlining the opposition views consisted only of a few pamphlets....The experts

invited to introduce the project were all from the Ministry of Water Resources and the yvpo, all of whom,

of course, supported the dam....I also made copies of the opposition pamphlets that the npc Secretariat had

refused to distribute. However, it turned out that I could not even give out these materials, since, according

to the rules of the meeting, delegates from different regions were prevented from having mutual contact.

Undeterred, Huang insisted on exercising his right to address the assembled delegates as provided for by

Article 54 of the npc's rules:

I raised my hand, requesting to speak, but was ignored by the chairman. I stood up anyway and at this point,

I heard a journalist from Taiwan shout: "No sound! No sound!" At first, I didn't know what had happened,

but later I learned that the entire sound system in the meeting hall had been shut down, with the exception

of the chairman's microphone.

So concluded the public policy-making debate. In taking the highly unusual and seemingly laudable step of

submitting the project for final decision by the npc, the government in fact had sought merely an uncritical

endorsement of the project and one which served to relieve it of ultimate responsibility rather than a genuinely

representative decision based upon the project's actual merits.

Securing the npc's formal imprimatur for the project, moreover, in no way diminished the authorities'

continued level of vigilance against opposition to the dam. In January 1994, Dai Qing tried four times to convene

a Three Gorges discussion seminar in Beijing involving academics, hydrologists, government officials and others.

On the first three occasions, her room bookings were cancelled without explanation by the venue managers, and on

the fourth, officials from the State Security Bureau tracked down all the invited participants and had stern warnings

against attending the meeting issued to them by their individual work units. As Dai later observed, "With no speakers

and no audience, how could I hold the seminar?", so she cancelled the seminar herself. She also noted that since the

average age of the participants was over seventy, it was not as if they were about to take to the streets to demonstrate

afterwards.

III. Case of the "Democratic Youth Party"

But what of those most directly affected by the Three Gorges megaproject namely the present inhabitants

of the proposed reservoir area? As the two confidential police reports appended below emphasize, grassroots

resistance to the project is increasing. The authorities' terms of reference for dealing with opposition are

uncompromising in those reports: "Public security organs...should resolutely uphold the policy of speed and severity

in striking timely blows at crimes and criminals that sabotage the Three Gorges construction and relocation."

So far as is known, there have been no public reports in the Chinese media concerning recent dissident

activity or arrests in the dam region. Information concerning a major case of precisely this type, however, was

documented in early 1993 in one of the confidential police reports appended below. According to the Wanxian police

authorities,

The "Democratic Youth Party" (Minzhu Qingnian Dang), a counterrevolutionary clique comprising a

network of 179 members that was uncovered and seized by the public security bureau in Kai County in May

1992, was a well-organized group that had been carrying out counterrevolutionary activities aimed at

sabotaging the policy of opening and reform and at disrupting the smooth progress of the Three Gorges

project.

A search by Human Rights Watch/Asia through all issues of the main Sichuan provincial newspaper and the

provincial legal press for 1992-93 has uncovered no public reports by the authorities on any aspect of this dissident

arrest case, although it appears to have been one of the largest in China for more than a decade. Inquiries about the

case by journalists and diplomats have elicited no information from Chinese officials. Nothing is known about who

the detainees were, what subsequently became of them, or the precise nature of the group's aims and activities. The

May 1992 crackdown on the Democratic Youth Party coincided, however, with a widespread series of arrests of the

organizers of peaceful pro-democracy parties in Beijing, Lanzhou, Zhengzhou and other Chinese cities, and the police

action in Kai County appears to have been part of this broader crackdown.

Such cases in China fall firmly within the orbit of what the government terms "sabotage by domestic

reactionary forces." As the Wanxian police report explained,

Enemy elements hostile to socialism that still exist within the country and international reactionary forces,

acting in coordination, use all kinds of methods to oppose the people's democratic dictatorship, to sabotage

the socialist revolution and construction, and to sabotage social order. The Three Gorges project will

necessarily become an important target of theirs.

Thus far, as in the case of the Tiananmen Square protests, the security authorities have found it expedient

to attribute much of the dam-related unrest to "foreign interference":

The Three Gorges project has attracted international attention. Friends around the world praise the

magnificent aspiration of the Chinese people, and will undoubtedly provide help and support by a variety

of means. At the same time, however, hostile domestic and foreign forces show great "interest" in the Three

Gorges project. They use mass media instruments such as television, radio, newspapers or wind-carried

leaflets to defame the Three Gorges project, or spy out information on the project and the population

relocation under the cover of legal activities such as tourism, visiting relatives, or news reporting. According

to statistics from the heart of the project, Wanxian Prefecture, alone, more than twice as many spies and

agents were sent by hostile international forces from January to August 1992 as in the whole of 1991.

Local opposition toward the Three Gorges project, however, appears to have been genuine and homegrown.

Kai County, the part of Wanxian District where the Democratic Youth Party was based, is a rural area containing

some of the most fertile and prosperous orange groves in China. These, and most of the county itself, are destined

to disappear when the Three Gorges reservoir is finally inundated. There is thus reason to believe that the alleged

"counterrevolutionary organization" uncovered by the county's security authorities in May 1992 was merely an

unofficial local pressure group, formed by local residents concerned about their impending forced relocation. If the

group had espoused or engaged in any violent activities, the confidential police report cited above would have

certainly said so.

Human Rights Watch/Asia calls upon foreign governments and businesses who are contemplating

involvement in the Three Gorges project and who believe that increased economic engagement represents the best

way to advance human rights in China to assist actively in seeking from the Chinese authorities a full and adequate

accounting of the fate of the Kai County pro-democracy detainees.

IV. Population Relocation Program

Approximately 10.2 million people have been involuntarily resettled in China since 1949 in connection with

some 86,000 dam and reservoir construction projects. More than half of the relocations were undertaken as a result

of the building of 311 large-scale dams, of which three the Danjiangkou, Sanmenxia and Xin'anjiang

projects involved population transfers each in excess of 300,000 persons, dwarfing all similar programs elsewhere

in the world. Official statistics indicate, moreover, that around 30 percent of all Chinese citizens relocated for dam-

building purposes since 1949 around three million people are still, despite government promises of an improved

quality of life after relocation, living in conditions of extreme poverty. Poor site selection was sometimes the main

reason for this; excessive scale of construction was often another. In the case of the Three Gorges project, policy-

makers have opted for the greatest and most expensive possible scale of construction (rising to a height of 185

meters, the dam will be the largest concrete structure on earth), at a single site on a heavily-populated stretch of the

world's third largest river.

While every government has the right of eminent domain, those forced to resettle should have the right to

voice their opposition to the project, to challenge it before an impartial court and to obtain adequate compensation.

The obligation of citizens to move, moreover, must not be allowed to form a basis or justification for acts of official

coercion, such as arbitrary detention or physical abuse, that are in violation of international standards of human

rights.

But in China, resettlements have often been carried out in ways which are highly abusive of human rights.

A forthcoming volume edited by Dai Qing provides a devastating critique of the human cost and consequences of

China's post-1949 dam-building program. Most of the Xin'anjiang Dam population-transfer program, for example,

although originally scheduled to be completed over a several-year period, was suddenly and forcibly carried out en

masse at the height of the Great Leap Forward. As Mou Mo and Cai Wenmei, two of the contributors to Dai's new

book, relate, in 1958 the Jiande District Party Committee issued a directive ordering that peasants should "take more

good ideology with them, and less old furniture"; social organization was to be "militarized" and the resettlements

carried out "like a battle action." On arrival at the resettlement sites, more than half of the 300,000 relocatees

reportedly found that they had been assigned to live in swamp or wasteland areas which officials then expected them

to reclaim and make habitable. The land generally proved unarable, and many of the families eventually had to uproot

themselves and begin the arduous resettlement process all over again. Over the next few decades, a similar pattern

of arbitrary and enforced relocations leading to severe hardship and impoverishment emerged in the cases of other

large dam-related resettlement programs elsewhere around the country.

Secrecy and Plans for Coercion

Such extreme abuses as these are unlikely to be inflicted upon those to be resettled for the building of the

Three Gorges dam. The mass involuntary resettlement program entailed by the project, however, has been conceived

as a "mass mobilization campaign", reminiscent of those which, in the past, have sacrificed people's welfare for the

fulfillment of grandiose, ill-conceived projects aimed at glorifying the state power. According to the authorities,

"The masses of the people of the Three Gorges area are willing to sacrifice their own interests and loyally support

the Three Gorges project....[This is] a vitally important guarantee of successfully accomplishing public security work

in the region."

The extent of people's willingness is questionable, and in any case, the fact is that they have not been asked

or informed about what awaits them. The million-plus population of the Three Gorges Dam area is to be subjected

to forced and involuntary relocation to areas that are, for the most part, infertile and already overpopulated hill-slopes

high above the proposed reservoir water-level. (Earlier plans to move a portion of the relocatees to remote areas of

Xinjiang Province were abandoned after an international outcry against the proposal. )

The blatantly coercive nature of the relocation program was spelled out in a document issued by the Sichuan

Provincial Government in July 1994:

Article 25. Resettlers compelled to evacuate by the resettlement plan and relevant agreements and contracts

may not procrastinate or refuse to relocate under any excuse. Those who have settled may not backtrack [to

their former homes] without authorization.

Those attempting to stage protest demonstrations or to carry out acts of civil disobedience, moreover, will

be summarily dealt with. In May 1993, the Hubei police authorities set themselves the task of "actively coordinating

all relevant departments to prevent and forestall armed mass disturbances arising from disputes over forestry, land

and water-conservancy resources, and to uncover and crack down hard against bad people who seek to incite or

exploit such disputes." Again, according to the recently-issued Sichuan regulations,

Article 39: Any person who, in breach of the provisions contained in this set of procedures, disrupts the

public order in the process of land-requisition compensation and relocation of residents, causing suspension

of the normal operation of work and production, will be punished by the public security authorities in

accordance with the Security Administration Punishment Act....Those whose offense constitutes a crime will

be prosecuted on the basis of their criminal responsibility according to law.

Moreover, the Security Administration Punishment Act, under which police officials can impose fines of

up to 3,000 yuan or sentence people without trial to periods of up to fifteen days' imprisonment, was amended by

the npc Standing Committee in May 1994 to bring a further eighteen new offenses within its scope. As the

Washington Post reported, "The [new] regulations allow authorities to crack down on members of unapproved

religious groups, members of ethnic groups who call for national independence, and political dissidents." And if

these sweeping new powers prove insufficient for quelling social unrest, the police can simply resort to alternative

regulations allowing them to impose, without trial, three-year custodial sentences of "labor re-education." With law-

enforcement options like these available, actual criminal prosecutions, which involve the police in troublesome

procedures like gathering evidence, are rarely required. In addition, new government legislation passed in February

1993 and July 1994 has given the police virtually carte blanche authority to determine "threats to state security," and

the judicial penalties for those sentenced on such grounds can extend to death.

Compensation and Expected Unrest

The process of determining compensation for those who are relocated falls far short of acceptable standards,

both monetarily and in terms of transparency and accountability. To offset the huge losses in land and property that

the relocated families will suffer, the government plans to apply a policy of "developmental relocation" (kaifaxing

yimin), whereby compensation funds will be given to local government bodies for agricultural and industrial

investment in the resettlement zones, as compared to the former policy of making cash payments directly to the

families themselves. Officials argue that the new policy will ensure an acceptable and steadily-rising living standard

for the displaced populations, thereby turning "negative and passive factors" into "positive and active ones." But the

compensation policy has not been based on any consultation with those affected, to Human Rights Watch/Asia's

knowledge, and there is a high risk that funds offered will be inadequate. Moreover, those affected have no adequate

legal mechanisms or ways through which to challenge the compensation offered.

Near-endemic levels of corruption now afflicting the Party-government administrative apparatus in China

will further reduce the amount of compensation actually delivered to relocated families. While corruption per se is

not a human rights abuse under international law, it frequently serves to trigger or exacerbate such abuses. Officials

who extort money from ordinary citizens or who impose illegal levies, for example, often do so forcibly and may

resort to violence to suppress popular protests against their corrupt practices. Of particular concern in this context

is the Three Gorges' "developmental relocation" policy which requires that compensation funds be handed over by

central government to officials in the localities concerned, who will then have discretion in deciding what portion

of the money is to be "invested" on the relocatees' behalf and what portion is to be handed over directly in the form

of cash payments.

The government is well aware that poor compensation sows the seeds of protest. According to the Wanxian

public security authorities,

There is no lack of precedent for disturbances. For example, problems left over from the relocation of

inhabitants in projects such as the Xinhua Reservoir in Wushan County, the Xiaojiang hydropower station

in Yunyang County and the Baishi Reservoir in Zhong County have constantly been the cause of frequent

mass disturbances of no small scale; these problems have not been overcome even at this time. These small

reservoirs involved the relocation of only a few hundred people, whereas the Three Gorges project will

involve a million. Once disturbances arise, it is difficult to predict how far they might go.

Meanwhile, an insight into the sheer scale of the sacrifices that the "masses" are currently expected to make

can be gleaned from just one example cited by the security authorities:

Most of the land to be submerged in Wanxian Prefecture is fertile flood plain, river valley and flat land. The

inhabitants of this area live in relative plenty. The largest county to be submerged is Kai County, famous

for its Mandarin oranges....Shuidong Village in the county's Fengle Township has a per capita annual income

of rmb 1,500, but its preliminary relocation target area, Huangling Village in Fengle Township, has a per

capita annual income of only rmb 500 per capita.

Already, in February 1994, protests flared among 5,000 relocatees who had been evacuated from Hubei's

Yichang County and then left in flimsy temporary housing in mid-winter temperatures. The settlers had apparently

been promised they would spend the Chinese New Year in houses far superior to those they had left behind.

However, a Hong Kong newspaper reported a local official as saying: "Not a single family has moved into new

permanent housing, because of slow progress and lack of funds." Added the report: "Sources said more than 100

companies claiming to be involved in `the Three Gorges development' had recently sprung up in Beijing, some

apparently backed by money originally intended for peasant resettlement in Hubei and Sichuan provinces."

As the confidential police reports conclude,

It is difficult to make arrangements that will satisfy the ideal expectations of the relocatees. If dealt with

improperly, this will cause social shock and endless trouble in the future....A slight exacerbation of this [type

of] antagonism, coupled with agitation by unlawful elements, will lead to disturbances such as sit-ins,

demonstrations, and petitions, or even to grave cases of beating, smashing and looting....Civil disputes,

violent fights and massive armed melees between groups of people will increase dramatically....There may

even be bloody armed incidents between organized groups and clans.

The catalogue of dam-related civil unrest and social turmoil privately being anticipated by the security

authorities is daunting in the extreme. Past experience suggests that emergent problems are unlikely to be dealt with

through enlightened conflict mediation practices. Instead, the authorities' first recourse, as in the case of the 179

members of the Democratic Youth Party in Kai County, will be toward swift repression aimed at "nipping problems

in the bud."

V. Labor Rights

China's suppression of free labor practices, and its incarceration of political prisoners in forced labor camps,

are directly relevant to the government's plans for construction of the Three Gorges dam. Given a well-established

pattern of abuses against China's migrant workers, the dam's construction will depend on labor conditions of

unregulated cruelty. And to the extent that materials used in construction are provided by labor camp enterprises,

some materials will be furnished through forced labor.

According to the security authorities, "Following the commencement of the project, a great construction army

of hundreds of thousands of persons will come to the area....[and] migrant laborers from all over the country will

blindly flow into the Three Gorges region." Currently, there are an estimated eighty to one hundred million migrant

workers (mingong) in China, mostly originating from impoverished rural areas and seeking work in the cities. Living

in conditions of squalor and insecurity, they are vulnerable to the twin depredations of exploitative factory owners,

who commonly make them work long hours in unsafe conditions, and public security officials who routinely detain,

beat and fine them for not having the proper working and residency permits. Even those outsiders working lawfully

are not safe from police-operated "squeeze" rackets and other forms of harassment. In numerous cases monitored

by Human Rights Watch/Asia in the Shenzhen special economic zone, for example, security officials have demanded

that migrant workers show their papers, and then, on production of the requisite documents, have torn them up and

fined the workers anyway. In neither case are receipts provided.

Although vitally important to China's emerging market economy, migrant laborers are widely resented by

local residents and heavily discriminated against by government authorities. Relegated to the bottom of the social

ladder, in practice they have virtually no rights at all. It is these same workers who will, for the most part, constitute

the labor force for the construction of the Three Gorges project.

At the same time, despite the government's public pledge that all those who are to be transferred out of the

Three Gorges development zone will be guaranteed fresh employment after the move, the security authorities have

no such expectation:

There will be a great amount of surplus labor among the relocatees. Although they will hope to get jobs in

factories, the number of people enterprises can take is limited. Thus, they will have to turn to some other

non-agricultural occupation and flow into the cities, increasing pressure on metropolitan areas, adding to

social problems, and creating a latent disaster for public security.

All this points inevitably to the emergence of a buyer's labor market in the Three Gorges region in which

temporary workers will be at the mercy of the authorities. Since formation of independent labor unions is

prohibited, they will be denied the right to organize to press for improvements in their working conditions. In May

1989, as elsewhere in China, attempts by workers in Sichuan and Hubei provinces to form such organizations were

met by naked governmental repression, and the organizers were promptly dispatched by China's courts to serve long

terms of imprisonment.

The plight of those on the lowest rung of China's labor hierarchy, namely the huge captive workforce held

throughout the countrywide network of forced-labor laogai agricultural camps and penal-industrial enterprises, must

also be considered. For decades, quarried limestone, concrete and bricks have formed together with the mining,

chemicals, machine tool and electrical goods industries the mainstays of the country's prison production system.

The provinces of Sichuan and Hubei contain at least 134 prison and "labor re-education" enterprises, many of which

are prominently engaged in the above-mentioned areas of production. The Three Gorges Dam has been described

as being the largest civil-engineering project since the building of the Great Wall more than two millennia ago, and

vast quantities of rock and cement will be required for its construction. Urban relocation and development in

preparation for the inundation of numerous cities and small towns in the reservoir area will consume similarly large

amounts of brick, glass, steel pipe, asbestos and other building materials before the project is finally completed.

Evidence that the laogai system will provide materials for the Three Gorges dam is strong, if to date

circumstantial. The biggest agro-industrial penal complex in the entire country Shayang Farm in Hubei

Province is located a mere one hundred kilometers from Sandouping, the Three Gorges dam site. The vast Shayang

complex comprises no fewer than thirteen labor-reform detachments (zhidui), five independent labor-reform brigades

(duli dadui) and eight additional jails. Extending over three municipalities and two counties and bordering on more

than 300 small towns and villages, the prison camp holds more than 71,000 prisoners and occupies a staggering total

of 2,146 square kilometers of land. Among the many forced-labor production units at Shayang are numerous brick

and tile factories, several cement plants and a claystone mine. The Chengdu Municipal Prison, meanwhile, doubles

as the "Sichuan New Life Electrical Generator Plant, where long-term inmates labor to produce seventeen different

kinds of hydroelectric power generators. And the Hubei labor-reform network owns and runs twenty-seven reservoirs,

all built by prisoners. (See Appendix IV for further examples.)

The laogai economic system has thoroughly penetrated China's construction-materials market. For example,

in the case of the Henan Province No. 18 Labor-Reform Detachment, a prison known externally as the Zhenhua Glass

Factory, a journal for prison officials notes:

In October 1992, following changes in the building materials market, the Zhenhua Glass Factory allocated

eighty-four young cadres imbued with a pioneering spirit to "take the plunge" into commerce. Since then,

twelve branches of the Xinglong Industry and Commerce Corporation have been set up in the cities of

Haikou, Beijing, Shanghai, Wuxi, Xi'an, Wuhan, Shenyang, Fuzhou, Chengdu, Taiyuan and Haerbin,

creating a total of forty different sales outlets nationwide....In this way, our goods were able to flood the

domestic market and we established a basis for entering the international market.

There is no indication that the government plans to reform these forced-labor enterprises. In fact, it has

given them tax-free status through at least the end of 1995, in a directive issued in March 1994. The Taxation

Bureau of Chongqing Municipality, the largest of the cities adjoining the proposed Three Gorges reservoir area, was,

moreover, among only five such authorities around the country to whom the directive was explicitly addressed.

Already benefiting from a wholly unpaid labor force, and potentially involved in producing materials for the Three

Gorges dam, the laogai system has thus been critically reinforced on the eve of the dam's proposed construction.

Foreign construction companies that choose to participate in the Three Gorges project, therefore, could easily find

themselves getting involved, directly or otherwise, in the use of materials and equipment produced by Chinese

prisoners.

VI. Conclusions

Until approximately 1987, the Chinese government regularly dismissed the whole concept of human rights

as being a "bourgeois fallacy" designed to mislead and disarm the proletariat and other vulnerable or unsuspecting

members of the socialist-state citizenry. Over the past few years, this stance has been superseded by a somewhat

more sophisticated set of official justifications as to why the authorities should be allowed to continue to deny

internationally recognized rights to Chinese people. In brief, the new argument claims that the low level of economic

development is the principal cause of weak human rights protection in China; that progress on or enhancement of

rights will therefore follow in the wake of rising economic prosperity; and that the government's opening up of a

"socialist market economy" and other current socioeconomic policies are precisely the means by which greater rights

will be achieved. A response to international human rights criticism, this view has recently been elevated by the

Chinese and several other Asian governments to the status of a theoretical defense of national culture and identity

on the part of all countries striving to free themselves from underdevelopment.

Reduced to its bare essentials, the argument maintains that authoritarian rule by an allegedly enlightened

political elite provides the only sure guarantee of sustained, orderly transition to the desired state of national

prosperity. Certain specific rights such as freedom of speech and the right to political or labor-related association

must therefore be "delayed," "controlled" or otherwise restricted in the interim. Implicit in the argument, but in

China's case expressed openly, is the view that those who seek to secure such rights are "wreckers" or "saboteurs"

of the nation's real interests.

There is no evidence to support the notion that a certain minimum level of economic development is a vital

precondition for the protection of fundamental human rights such as the right to freedom from torture or arbitrary

arrest and imprisonment and the right to peaceful demonstration and association. There is nothing either socially

"beneficial" or economically "functional" about violation of these rights; indeed it consumes huge amounts of public

funds to maintain an efficient police-state apparatus and to keep large numbers of dissidents locked away behind bars.

It is often those critical voices that are the most urgently needed during the kind of rapid modernization

process on which many Asian countries are embarked. With the rapid erosion of traditional communitarian structures

and value systems that invariably accompanies such change, freedom of speech and association often become

citizens' last line of defense against arbitrary or misguided government notions of how economic modernization

should proceed; they can also stimulate important correctives to bad policies. The Chinese government's drive to

suppress all unofficial political groupings, independent trade unions, local residents' negotiating bodies, ethnic-rights

lobbyists or any other sectoral-interest groups showing even a hint of independence, is rapidly driving these new

forces out of the arena of public debate, and in some cases, they have turned to violent forms of protest. By keeping

the lid down tightly on public debate now, the authorities could be stoking up a major explosion of social discontent

in the future.

Rapid economic growth in countries led by highly authoritarian political systems does not necessarily lead

to political liberalization or greater human rights. As even a cursory glance at government statements and

publications makes clear, the basic terms originally set out by Deng Xiaoping when he offered his "new prosperity

deal" to the country in 1978 namely, that the government would provide the population with greater economic,

social and cultural freedom in exchange for its continued, unquestioning obedience to the one-party political

system have not been relaxed since. Indeed, far from any overall expansion in the scope of civil liberties and human

rights having occurred since Deng's seminal "trip to the south" in spring 1992, new public order and state security-

related legislation introduced by the government over the past two years has reduced the scope of legally permitted

political, religious and other forms of free expression and dissent to considerably less than that available to citizens

in the early to mid-1980s. The right to strike, moreover, was deleted from China's Constitution not by the Gang of

Four, but by the administration of Deng Xiaoping.

If one clear lesson emerges from all that has happened in China since June 1989, it is that neither Deng nor

his successors are likely to move towards guarantees of fundamental civil and political rights. The claim that private

enterprise will automatically "generate" greater pluralism and enhanced respect for rights is wishful thinking --

allegations of grave violations of worker rights come more often from the private, rather than the state-owned, sectors

of the economy, and extend to many joint-venture concerns operated in China by Hong Kong, Taiwanese, South

Korean and, to a lesser extent, Western companies.

The Three Gorges project may represent the greatest test to date of the sincerity of the Chinese government's

arguments concerning the dependency of human rights upon the economy. As one of the largest single investment

and construction project in the country's current ten-year plan of economic development, and one which by its

incorporation of large quantities of foreign investment and expertise was meant to serve as a showcase of the

"opening and reform" policy, the Three Gorges project might have been expected to embody somewhat more

consultative decision-making processes than did similar previous projects in China, with respect for the

constitutionally-guaranteed right to free speech and assembly of local individuals or groups who remained

unconvinced of the project's promised advantages. Instead, expert scientific and technical debate on the issues was

suppressed; those who opposed the project or opposed relocation had no means to obtain full information or demand

redress for losses; and secret arrests of political dissidents in the area took place because of their opposition to the

dam. And the twenty-year dam construction and mass involuntary resettlement program has only just begun.

As numerous tragic events in China's post-1949 history from the Anti-Rightist Movement of 1957 to the

Banqiao Dam collapse of 1975 and the Beijing Massacre of 1989 have demonstrated all too clearly, the real threat

to public health and safety in China comes from a ruling party that brooks no outside scrutiny of, and accepts no

public accountability for, its actions. The Three Gorges project has already led to dissident arrests and shows a clear

potential for generating major human rights abuses in the future. Given the scale of the planned population

resettlements and the likelihood of widespread public protests and unrest, decisive government action aimed at

remedying the current absence of scrutiny and accountability in the project is now urgently required. Current

indications are, however, that no such action is envisaged by the authorities. Perhaps the true function of the Three

Gorges dam will simply be to stand like Emperor Qin Shihuang's Great Wall as an ultimate symbol of the power

and authority of the state.

VII. Recommendations

the chinese government

* The Chinese government should provide full access to information about the proposed settlement program to those

affected and permit the latter to freely express their views on the project. It should also allow unrestricted debate

more generally on the merits of the project.

* The Chinese government should provide full information about the legal status and whereabouts of the 179

members of the Democratic Youth Party reportedly detained in connection with their protests against the Three

Gorges project in May 1992 in Kai County, Sichuan. Any persons still detained on account of such activities should

be freed forthwith, and the government should refrain from any further arbitrary denials of the right to peaceful

assembly and free expression in the Three Gorges area and cease punishing or persecuting those opposed to the dam's

construction.

* The Chinese government should establish an independent commission of experts charged with the task of

monitoring and supervising the progress of the Three Gorges population-transfer program. The commission should

reflect the main social constituencies and principal areas of specialist knowledge involved in the resettlement project,

and should be endowed with sufficient powers including the rights to investigate suspected abuses by government

officials, publish its findings independently and submit complaints to government or judicial authorities to enable

it to safeguard the interests of those being resettled.

* The Chinese government should allow unrestricted access by human rights and humanitarian organizations to the

dam site, including to prisons in the area, so that allegations of abuse and the Chinese government's steps to redress

them can be verified.

* The Chinese government should instruct the Sichuan and Hubei provincial governments to establish an institutional

framework for genuine consultations between the authorities and members of the resettlement population, with a

view to minimizing unfair or arbitrary treatment and ensuring transparency and consistency in the implementation

of resettlement criteria and standards of compensation.

* The Chinese government should seek the advice and involvement of the International Labor Organization (ilo)

to reduce the likelihood of labor rights abuses, including repression of independent labor organizers and mistreatment

of migrant workers. The ilo should send a team to China to make recommendations for specific protections of

internationally recognized labor rights, including freedom of association. Its findings should also be presented to the

ilo annual conference next June (1996) for consideration by governments involved directly or indirectly subsidizing

the project.

foreign governments

* Governments considering providing equipment, financing, commercial licensing, insurance or other goods and

services for the Three Gorges project, either directly to the Chinese government or to corporations registered in their

countries, should insist on independent studies of the likely human rights impact of the project before any agreements

are concluded. Those studies should be undertaken by an expert team, including human rights professionals, with

no ties whatsoever to the Chinese or any other government and with unrestricted access to the region. They should

include investigation of access to information about the project and efforts to suppress or control it; plans for or

implementation of resettlement, including ability to dissent and obtain redress for losses; and involvement of the

security forces in resettlement and examination of any coercion used. No investment should take place until such

studies have been completed and their findings made public.

* Government-supported financing, commercial licensing, insurance or other goods and services for the Three Gorges

should also be made contingent on the provision by the Chinese government of full information as to the legal status

and whereabouts of the 179 people reportedly detained in connection with their protests against the project in May

1992 in Kai Country, Sichuan.

private foreign investors

* Private investors should seek assurances from the Chinese government that the freedoms of expression and

association of those involved in the resettlement process or debating the Three Gorges project are respected; and that

the right to legal redress of those involved in the resettlement process to challenge decisions as well as protect other

rights are respected.

* Private investors should also seek assurances from the Chinese government that harsh repressive

measures including judicial penalties such as the death penalty imposed on "state security" grounds or the excessive

use of force will not be used in the course of the massive relocation program. They should also make it clear to

Chinese authorities that gross human rights abuses committed while carrying out forced relocations would reflect

badly on private foreign investors and may limit or preclude their ability to invest in Three Gorges.

private corporate activity

* Foreign corporations, especially construction companies, should include in their contracts explicit prohibitions on

the use of materials and equipment produced by Chinese prisoners. Their contracts should specify penalties they will

impose (such as surcharges or cancellation of contracts) if they discover that they are inadvertently using building

materials made by prisoners in the Sichuan and Hubei laogai. Governments underwriting investments in Three

Gorges should require such provisions in all contracts.

Human Rights Watch/Asia (formerly Asia Watch)

Human Rights Watch is a nongovernmental organization established in 1978 to monitor and promote the observance of

internationally recognized human rights in Africa, the Americas, Asia, the Middle East and among the signatories of the Helsinki

accords. Kenneth Roth is the executive director; Cynthia Brown is the program director; Holly J. Burkhalter is the advocacy

director; Gara LaMarche is the associate director; Juan E. Mendez is general counsel; and Susan Osnos is the communications

director. Robert L. Bernstein is the chair of the executive committee and Adrian W. DeWind is vice chair. Its Asia division was

established in 1985 to monitor and promote the observance of internationally recognized human rights in Asia. Sidney Jones

is the executive director; Mike Jendrzejczyk is the Washington director; Robin Munro is the Hong Kong director; Zunetta Liddell,

Patricia Gossman and Jeannine Guthrie are research associates;Dinah PoKempner is counsel; Mark Girouard is a Luce fellow;

Diana Tai-Feng Cheng and Jennifer Hyman are associates; Mickey Spiegel is a research consultant.

Appendix I

Public Security Problems And

Countermeasures In The Three Gorges Area

(Internal Report of February 1993 by Officials of the

Wanxian Prefectural Public Security Department)

The Three Gorges Project has attracted worldwide attention. This project marks the initiation of a strong

attack on poverty in China and will be seen as an epic accomplishment in the history of water control projects. The

tremendous social and economic benefits flowing from the "lake within the gorges" [a phrase from one of Mao

Zedong's poems] are incomparable, and this project heralds a golden opportunity to invigorate the economy in the

Three Gorges Area. At the same time, public security problems have accompanied prosperity, and will be pervasive

throughout the process. If underestimated or handled improperly, these problems could influence the construction

of the project and the economic and social stability of the area. Chance and challenge coexist.

The Three Gorges Project is a world-class project. The extensive construction and the accompanying

relocation of inhabitants present difficult tasks that cannot be completed without the guarantee of a healthy and stable

internal and external environment. Thus, the purpose of this article is to present a preliminary estimate of public

security concerns during and after completion of the project in the Three Gorges area. These estimates are based on

the results of investigations and special inquiries, as well as on the forecasts of experts. The Three Gorges project

will result in the spatial redistribution of productive resources, the recombination of factors of production at a higher

level, the relocation of cities and towns, and a basic change in the scheme of public order in the region. A new reality

is emerging from these changes.

I. The Immediate and Long-term Concerns of a Million Relocated People

The resettlement of one million inhabitants is a mammoth, systematic undertaking. It involves partial

adjustment and rebuilding of the old economic structures, productive structures, work order, productive order and

social order. This process precedes construction and is more demanding even than the construction itself. Therefore,

relocation is a preliminary problem that is critical to the entire Three Gorges project.

In the primary area to be submerged, Wanxian Prefecture, investigations by relevant departments show that

the area submerged will account for two-thirds of the total reservoir area. Of a total of nine counties and one city in

the prefecture, seven counties, one city, fifty-six districts or towns, 176 townships, and 770 villages will be

submerged; this includes one city, six county seats, 108 market towns, 955 enterprises, 250,000 mu of cultivated land

and 20,990,000 square meters of building space will be submerged. The fixed assets to be submerged total rmb 1.8

billion. The project will involve the direct relocation of 570,000 people; ultimately 800,000 people will move.

Having summed up domestic and foreign experience from the past to the present, the state decided to carry

out a policy of developmental relocation instead of the old policy of compensated relocation in order to fully exploit

the rich resources of the area. This relocation policy with Chinese characteristics has already been successfully

implemented experimentally, and large-scale relocation can also proceed in an orderly fashion. Because, however,

of its scope, scale, ramifications, and demands, the relocation of a million people is a problem of world-class

proportions. If dealt with improperly, this process will cause social shock and endless trouble in the future.

1. It is difficult to make arrangements that will satisfy the ideal expectations of the relocatees. This might

lead to a certain number of disturbances involving confrontations between the masses and the government. The

region to be submerged has a long history of development and is relatively wealthy compared with other regions in

the Three Gorges area. For example, most of the land to be submerged in Wanxian Prefecture is fertile flood plain,

river valley and flat land. The inhabitants of this area live in relative plenty. The largest county to be submerged is

Kai County, famous for its Mandarin oranges. All of the land lost in this county contains rice producing areas and

Mandarin orchards. Shuidong Village in Fengle Township in this county has a per capita annual income of rmb 1500,

but its preliminary relocation target area, Huangling Village in Fengle Township, has a per capita annual income of

only rmb 500 per capita. Most relocatees have to move to mountainous areas, and there are substantial difficulties

in moving people from rich areas to poor mountainous areas.

In matters such as compensation for property and the allocation of land and housing sites, a gap between the

relocatees' hoped-for valuation and the actual compensation is bound to occur. For example, the new county seat of

Yunyang County is a 9.95 square kilometer tract. The relocatees are demanding compensation totaling nearly rmb

100 million for mulberry trees alone. The conflict between expectations and frustrated desires could easily foster

antagonism toward the government on the part of the relocatees and lead to some of the people refusing to move. This

would hamper the smooth progress of the Three Gorges project. A slight exacerbation of this antagonism, coupled

with agitation by unlawful elements, will lead to disturbances such as sit-ins, demonstrations, and petitions, or even

to grave cases of beating, smashing, and looting.

There is no lack of precedent for such disturbances. For example, problems left over from the relocation of

inhabitants in projects such as the Xinhua Reservoir in Wushan County, the Xiaojiang hydropower station in

Yunyang County and the Baishi Reservoir in Zhong County have constantly been the cause of frequent mass

disturbances of no small scale; these problems have not been overcome even at this time. These small reservoirs

involved the relocation of only a few hundred people, whereas the Three Gorges project will involve a million. Once

disturbances arise, it is difficult to predict how far they might go.

2. The redistribution of benefits during the adjustment period will intensify jealousies between the masses

in different relocation zones. Civil disputes, violent fights, and massive armed melés between groups of people will

increase dramatically. During the relocation period, it is difficult to redistribute benefits in a manner that is absolutely

fair. The conflicts between relocatees and local people are difficult to coordinate and harmonize. The area where the

Wanxian inhabitants are to be moved is already one of many people and little land; resettling a large number of

people there will inevitably involve the redistribution of land and forest resources. On one hand, the current standard

of living of the local people is relatively backward, and in the past fights over water, trees, and patches of farm land

among local peasants in the area constantly disturbed the public order. On the other, the circumstances of those

relocated to the area will undergo drastic changes with the movement of people and property into the area. In the

preliminary period of the "backward and upward movement" (hou kao) of relocatees to underdeveloped areas,

relocatees cannot retain their old standards of living, so psychologically they would expect higher compensation for

their sacrifice to the Three Gorges project.

The conflict between the different psychological attitudes of relocatees and local people will inevitably find

expression in conduct. That conflicts of interest between families, villages, immigrants and local people will lead

to disputes and fights is unavoidable; there may even be bloody armed incidents between organized groups and clans.

The employment of relocatees will also be a factor conducive to conflict because of differences in the abilities of the

relocatees, limitations in placement options, and differences in the placement of families and family members.

3. The sentimental attachment to native land is and will remain a great psychological obstacle during and

after the relocation period. "A man loves his native land like a bird loves its nesting trees." This deep-seated

traditional outlook is difficult to eradicate from the minds of most relocatees. With the commencement of the Three

Gorges project, relocation will move from the experimental stage to actual large- scale implementation. If the

relocatees are a bit unsatisfied, they will be overwhelmed by homesickness welling up in their hearts and this will

result in the release of pent-up dissatisfaction. They may create disturbances on the slightest provocation in order

to pressure the government, or they may return to their old homes in a cycle of action and reaction. This may become

an intractable long-term relocation problem and a latent threat to public order.

II. The Strong Impact of Three Gorges "Fevers"

The resolution concerning the construction of the Three Gorges project passed [in April 1992] by the Fifth

Session of the Seventh National People's Congress made possible the realization of the "lake within the gorges" and

quickly generated a series of unusual "fevers". Among these are a tourist fever to bid farewell to Three Gorges, an

investment fever to develop the Three Gorges economy, and a fever of "gold panning" [i.e. improper profit-making]

brought on by development. These fevers have abruptly altered the usual serenity of this area, bringing unprecedented

opportunities for prosperity to the simple and hard working inhabitants of the area. At the same time, these fevers

have also caused a series of problems in the realms of social administration and public security.

1. Public security problems have increased sharply with tourism fever. Although the charm of the Three

Gorges landscape will remain and become even more magnificent after the completion of the dam, domestic and

foreign tourists still believe that the current scenery of the Three Gorges is more unspoiled and appealing. They have

swarmed in, driven by the urge to experience the area before it changes.

According to pertinent information, eleven foreign-run luxury cruise boats began operations on March 15,

1993, and tickets for the year have been sold out for some time even though the fare is as high as US $540 per person.

Statistics from the "Golden Triangle" of Fengjie, Wushan, and Wuxi in Wanxian Prefecture show that the area

accommodated some 400,000 tourists from April to July of 1992. The Wushan county seat, with an area of a mere

1.2 square kilometers, received some 70,000 tourists from May 1 to May 10, 1993. Even with the best efforts of the

local government, it could see to the food, accommodation, and recreational needs of only half this number, and

every day thousands of tourists rested on rented stools or camped out on street corners. The public security office

marshalled over 100 police officers to maintain public order, but fights over tour boat places or food and lodging

constantly broke out. There were more than thirty cases of violence with relatively serious consequences. From

commencement to completion of the Three Gorges project, tourism fever will continue to heat up and the tourism

industry will be unable to meet the demands being placed on it. This situation cannot be changed in a short time, and

presents a serious threat to public security and order in tourist areas.

2. Investment fever has also caused new problems in the mechanisms of social administration. The long years

of indecision over the Three Gorges project affected state investment in the area and were a big constraint on the

area's economic development. Using Wanxian Prefecture as an example, in the 40 years from 1949 to 1989,

budgetary investment from the central government totalled only rmb 610 million, or rmb 70 per capita. Before the

Seventh Five-Year Plan, not a single large enterprise was located in the area, resulting in a serious lack of industrial

infrastructure. After the passage of the resolution approving the Three Gorges project, hundreds of millions of yuan

in investments of all kinds flowed in from the central government.

With the commencement of a multitude of major construction projects and the construction of new cities and

towns, many construction teams are bound to swarm in to the area. Disputes caused by competition for work,

construction sites, and materials can not be avoided in this situation. Hundreds of thousands of construction workers

and others not native to the area are going to pour in. With so many people of different individual qualities crowded

together in such a limited space, there are bound to be increased frictions and collisions, and public security problems

are bound to increase. The control of temporary and floating populations, the security of many major projects, the

safe circulation of huge sums of construction investments, and the protection of scattered construction sites are all

needs that cannot be met by the current administrative structure, security control forces, and administrative methods.

If measures of a fundamental nature are not adopted, problems of public security will increase more and more and

become a negative factor hindering economic construction.

3. "Gold panning fever" spurs the growth of unlawful and criminal activity. The Three Gorges project and

the development of the area has attracted a large pool of talented people, and a good number of construction

personnel will acquit themselves well on this historical stage. But there will be a great number of gold panners

dreaming of wealth who will go on a spree when they earn money, and try to find other illegal means of making

money when they are unsuccessful. Along with this will come a clear change in the direction of roving criminals.

Instead of flowing from this area into the developed coastal areas as they have in recent years, criminals will, in a

quick counterthrust, start flowing from other areas to here to stir up trouble. This constitutes a serious threat to social

order in the area.

At the same time, the huge flow and concentration of people, property and other resources provides more

opportunities for criminal activity. The number of "six scourges" cases [i.e. prostitution, hooliganism, etc.] has shot

up, gang crimes are increasing, and mafia-type gangs will become an evil force jeopardizing public security in the

area. Moreover, "gold panning fever" directly entices some state officials to engage in criminal activities such as

corruption, bribe-taking, embezzlement, speculation, and fraud. This will hinder to some degree the smooth process

of construction and relocation in the Three Gorges project.

III. Immense Changes in the Geography of Land and Water

With the completion of the Three Gorges project and the filling of the reservoir, the water surface area will

increase, and numerous bays, lakes, confluences, peninsulas and islands will be created. The great changes in the

physical geography of land and water will cause major changes in patterns of public security. The old pattern

consisted of three crime belts along the river, on the roads, and in remote mountain areas, each having distinctive

characteristics. This pattern was based on economic, transportation, and cultural differences in these areas, and these

factors will undergo fundamental changes in the course of this project. Belts along rivers and roads, which originally

had the most crime and most complex public security environment, will be enlarged. Both the intensity and scope

of problems in these areas will increase. Along with the expansion of the water area, water transportation, fishing,

aquaculture, and tourism will develop rapidly. Crimes committed by thieves and pirates living off this water network

will be especially visible, and criminals will have more opportunities for action. This greatly increases the difficulty

of controlling and preventing crime. With the relocation of a million people toward the mountains and the creation

of cities and towns along the shore, the population around the reservoir will become even denser, and the golden

shore will see the emergence of an even more complex security environment.

IV. The Attention of the International Community

The Three Gorges project has attracted international attention. Friends around the world praise the

magnificent aspiration of the Chinese people, and will undoubtedly provide help and support by a variety of means.

At the same time, however, hostile domestic and foreign forces show great "interest" in the Three Gorges project.

They use mass media instruments such as television, radio, newspapers or wind-carried leaflets to defame the Three

Gorges project, or spy out information on the project and the population relocation under the cover of legal activities

such as tourism, visiting relatives, or news reporting. According to statistics from the heart of the project, Wanxian

Prefecture, alone, more than twice as many spies and agents were sent by hostile international forces from January

to August 1992 as in the whole year of 1991. The "Democratic Youth Party", a counterrevolutionary clique

comprising a network of 179 members that was uncovered and seized by the public security bureau in Kai County

in May 1992, was a well-organized group that had been carrying out counterrevolutionary activities aimed at

sabotaging the policy of opening and reform and at disrupting the smooth progress of the Three Gorges project.

V. Proposed Public Security Counter-measures in the Three Gorges Area

It cannot be denied that it is an objective necessity that the Three Gorges project and the relocation of the

population of the reservoir area will bring about a fundamental change in public security patterns. The purpose of

recognizing this objective necessity is, through analysis and prediction, to formulate appropriate countermeasures

in order to control and reduce incidence and development of the above problems, create a healthy public security

environment for the Three Gorges project, and ensure a smooth process of construction and relocation. From an

objective consideration of the situation, we believe that the countermeasures to public security problems in the Three

Gorges area should be based on historical characteristics of this world-class project, and specific measures should

be guided by the policy of "strengthening leadership, thinking in the long term, taking the entire situation into

consideration, and comprehensive control."

1. Powerful political and complete legal safeguards are the basic guarantee of the smooth implementation

of the Three Gorges project and the relocation of the population. The Three Gorges project involves five prefectures

in Hubei and Sichuan provinces. The current administrative structure is ill-suited to meet the needs of construction

and relocation work. A Three Gorges special administrative region should be established along with a special

organization to direct public security work in the area. The central government and Three Gorges special

administrative region should put on their agenda of important matters public security work following changes in the

public security pattern of the area. They should conduct full investigations and verification, and formulate practical

and effective countermeasures. The state should proceed from an understanding of the actual facts and enact a

complete set of laws and regulations in order to adjust the new relationships developing with the Three Gorges

project and accompanying relocation so as to assure that in all matters there are laws and regulations to follow.

2. Speeding up the process of reform and opening, invigorating the economy in the Three Gorges area, and

establishing a sound material foundation is the economic guarantee of a fundamental stabilization of public order

in this area. Public security and the development of the economy through reform and opening are two sides of the

same coin; they complement and promote each other. A healthy public security environment spurs the development

of the economy, while the development of the economy is a prerequisite of stable social order. People in the Three

Gorges area should emancipate their minds more, reform their old viewpoints, expand opening, speed up reform,

coordinate with domestic and foreign partners, fully exploit the comparative advantages of local resources, efficiently

and imaginatively use the policies and funds of developmental relocation, and be self-reliant and hard working in

order to promote the take-off of the Three Gorges economy.

3. We should vigorously promote a spirit of contribution among the people of the Three Gorges area and

create an atmosphere of support and concern for the Three Gorges project. The Three Gorges project is a historic feat

that will benefit our descendants and all of mankind. The media should not only publicize the significance of the

project itself, but also focus especially on the enormous sacrifices and contributions made by the people of the Three

Gorges area. They should help more people understand, care for, and support the Three Gorges project and its people.

At the same time, they should instill in the people of the area a warm love for the Three Gorges project and an

enthusiasm for its construction, in order to strengthen the psychological fortitude of the relocatees.

4. We should incorporate public security problems into a systematic process in which the whole Party is

involved and implement comprehensive control. The Three Gorges project and population relocation is an

unprecedented project with implications in the areas of politics, economics, law, and culture. For this reason, the

public security problems that may occur are complicated. Thus we must, in accordance with the new patterns of

public security in the area and under the leadership of the Party and government at every level, use varied legal,

political, economic, and administrative methods to make public security part of a systematic process and implement

comprehensive control. When it comes to specific matters, we should truly implement the principle that "whoever

is in charge should be responsible", put all kinds of protective measures into effect, predict problems in advance of

their occurring, and devise countermeasures in order to solve potential public security problems at an early stage,

solve them within the administrative apparatus, and solve them at the basic level.

5. Public security organs must resolutely adhere to the concept of safeguarding the course of the Three

Gorges project and fully carry out their duties. First, they should adopt strong measures to forcefully attack serious

criminal activities. In particular, they should resolutely uphold the policy of speed and severity in striking timely

blows at crimes and criminals that sabotage Three Gorges construction and relocation. Public security organs should

make careful plans to properly handle public security problems and mass disturbances arising from relocation. They

should strengthen all aspects of professional public security work, improve work methods and style, and increase

the fighting effectiveness of the ranks. Second, the public security organs should strengthen their investigation and

research and go deeply into those regions and towns that will be major areas of relocation as well as major work units

involved in the project to study new trends and problems of public security and formulate appropriate concrete

countermeasures.

The state should take immediate steps to remedy the public security organs' inadequacy to the needs of the

struggle in the areas of organization, policing capability, and equipment. First, a public security and state security

organ capable of unified command should be established in the reservoir region, and in accordance with the particular

characteristics of the area an aquatic public security sub-bureau should be established and the number of police

substations on the water increased. Second, number of personnel should be increased, and policing capability

established that is appropriate to its responsibilities. Third, the Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of State

Security should follow the directive of the center on cooperation between central and local organs and provide

transportation, communications, and technical investigation facilities in order to meet the combat-readiness needs

of all units in the Three Gorges area.

Appendix II

On The Public Security Situation

In The Three Gorges Area

(Internal Report of February 1994 by Officials of the

Hubei Province Yichang Municipal Public Security Bureau)

Following the passage by the National People's Congress of the resolution to construct the Three Gorges

project, the countdown has begun. An important guarantee of the project is the public security system. How to bring

it into play is an issue that has naturally attracted the attention of the people of the whole country, especially public

security and security defense departments. For this reason, it is vital to examine the prospects for the public security

situation in the Three Gorges region (including the dam region, the reservoir region, and the surrounding areas) and

to propose appropriate measures.

I. Factors Related to Public Security in the Three Gorges Region

The Three Gorges project is an epic hydraulic undertaking that will necessarily bring political, economic,

and social changes to the Three Gorges region. Broad changes in all sectors of society will have an immense impact

on the nature, level and speed of evolution of all aspects of public security in the Three Gorges region.

A. Factors Having a Positive Effect on Public Security

1. The scientific and cautious attitude of the Party Central toward the Three Gorges project. The process of

decision in the Three Gorges project has throughout been scientific and democratic. From its first exposition in the

1950s, forty years passed before a final decision was reached. The scale of the preliminary work, the length of time

it took, and the depth of research and proof are all rare in China or abroad. The scientific decision both established

a firm foundation for the success of the project and avoided in a fundamental way public security problems that

would result from an erroneous decision.

2. Creative relocation policies. The Party Central conscientiously summed up the lessons taught by the

experience of relocation over the years. It rejected the traditional practice of simple resettlement and compensation.

To the million relocatees in the Three Gorges, it clearly advanced the policy of "developmental relocation" (kaifaxing

yimin). This policy changes loss-oriented compensation into development-oriented creation; it turns relief payments

into production assistance. It joins together the resettlement of relocatees and construction and economic

development in the reservoir area, opening a new road with Chinese characteristics for the resettlement of relocatees.

Both in China and abroad, this is a great creation in the history of hydroelectric project construction and relocation

of persons in the reservoir area. This creative relocation policy has played a key role in reducing social unrest brought

about by mass relocation and guaranteeing social stability in the reservoir area.

3. The great economic benefits of the Three Gorges project. The Three Gorges project is a key water control

project that brings great benefits in flood control, electricity generation, and navigation. Its completion will speed

progress toward the Four Modernizations, raise overall national strength, and bring in its train economic development

over a broad range. Such huge economic benefits supply a strong material basis for stable social order not only in

the Three Gorges region, but over the whole country.

4. The support of the people of the Three Gorges region for the construction of the Three Gorges dam. The

people who have lived and multiplied on the banks of the Three Gorges have been looking forward to the

construction of the dam for several generations. That the masses of the people in the Three Gorges area are willing

to sacrifice their own interests and loyally support the Three Gorges project is a vitally important guarantee of

successfully accomplishing public security work in the region.

5. The importance placed by the leadership at all levels on public security in the Three Gorges region. The

Three Gorges project is the most magnificent project of the Chinese people. Public security work, which will ensure

that the project is carried out smoothly, naturally has received a high degree of attention from the leadership at all

levels. In January 1993, the Ministry of Public Security specially issued a document approving the establishment of

the Three Gorges Dam Region Sub-Bureau of the Yichang City Public Security Bureau. The leadership of the Three

Gorges Development General Company, which is responsible for the construction of the Three Gorges project, also

earnestly look forward to the strengthening of public security work in the Three Gorges region by political-legal

organs and public security departments.

B. Factors Having a Negative Effect on Public Security

Factors that could have a negative, harmful effect on public security in the Three Gorges region comes from

various sources such as politics, economics, and ideology. It is necessary to note, however, that the negative factors

discussed here are not fixed and unchangeable. With the promulgation and implementation of a series of policies and

measures, the negativity of these factors will gradually decrease and may even become positive.

1. Harmful Influences from the Realm of Politics

(a) Influence of international factors. The policy toward the outside world of the Three Gorges project is one

of opening and relaxation. While this will attract advanced technology and facilities as well as investors and tourists

from abroad, it will at the same time provide an opening through which the corrupt ideology and culture of the

bourgeoisie and international crime can enter. All kinds of international criminal activity will seep into the Three

Gorges region. This international environment, which is harmful to public security, will exist for a long time. To

resist and eliminate its malign influence is a long-term task of ours.

(b) Sabotage by domestic reactionary forces. Enemy elements hostile to socialism that still exist within the

country and international reactionary forces, acting in coordination, use all kinds of methods to oppose the people's

democratic dictatorship, to sabotage the socialist revolution and construction, and to sabotage social order. The Three

Gorges project will necessarily become an important target of theirs.

(c) Harmful factors left over from history. The political situation of the dam region has historically been very

complex. In addition to official Kuomintang influence, the activities of religious groups and reactionary sectarian

organizations (zongjiao he fandong hui-daomen) are extremely vigorous. The complex political base of society is

a harmful influence on public security work around the dam.

2. Negative Factors Arising from Economic Activities

(a) The Three Gorges project has become an experiment in the construction of extra-large projects within

the socialist market economy. All kinds of economic constituents will have a role to play in the Three Gorges project.

The economic interests of social groups will inevitably conflict, and the accumulation and sharpening of these

conflicts and contradictions will constitute a grave threat to public security.

(b) The Three Gorges reservoir region remains to this day one of the country's fourteen poorest regions. The

market economy brought by the Three Gorges project will create a great shock wave. This will bring about a sudden

change in the semi-feudal economy of this region, and economic development will take off. Because of differences

in people's cognitive abilities, and because Chinese have a tendency to jump on the bandwagon and follow the crowd,

plunging recklessly into things, there is a real possibility that some areas will experience economic overheating. This

will influence the stability of social order in these areas.

(c) The vast investment and great material requirements of the Three Gorges project, as well as the great

amount of investment by various investors in economic construction in the Three Gorges region, will mean a great

amount of capital in circulation. As the point of collection and disbursement for a large amount of money and

materials, the Three Gorges region will necessarily become a coveted target of criminals.

3. The Shock from the Realm of Ideology

(a) The establishment of the socialist market economy is a revolution in the realm of people's thinking. At

the same time that it spurs social development, the market economy produces a very obvious negative effect on

people's thinking. Some people will be money worshippers. The Three Gorges project will be a strong stimulus to

the material desires of these people. These "gold-panners" will come to the Three Gorges with the dream of becoming

rich. This desire to seek money at all costs will lead some people to put the law to the test.

(b) The Three Gorges region will become another window of China's opening to the outside, and bourgeois

culture from abroad will also take this opportunity to seep in. The ideology and lifestyle of loving leisure and hating

work, mutual trickery, harming others to benefit oneself, rottenness and decadence, "sexual liberation," and "sexual

freedom" will have a strong effect on people's thinking. This subtle and imperceptible corrosion is an important

element in encouraging crime.

(c) Following the commencement of the project, a great construction army of hundreds of thousands of

persons will come to the area. This great influx will not only put great pressure on the service sector for living

necessities, but will also, because of the inability of construction of cultural and recreational facilities to meet the

demand in a short period of time, mean a deficient cultural life. This cultural thirst will provide an opening to all

kinds of low-class, vulgar culture and ugly social phenomena.

(d) The constructors of the Three Gorges project will come from all areas of the country: some from the

coast, some from inland; some from big cities, some from poor and isolated regions. There will be great differences

in individual qualities. The differences among these people from the four corners of the country in terms of ways of

thinking, lifestyle, educational level, etc. will bring about a psychological intolerance among them. In the absence

of appropriate, effective adjustments, this intolerance could develop into psychological conflict, and the

externalization of psychological conflict will result in serious security problems.

4. Harmful Influences from Social Life

(a) The population problem. The construction of the Three Gorges project will put the population problem

of the Three Gorges region squarely before us. Over the next decade and some, the population of the Three Gorges

region will be greatly increased not only by the natural and automatic rise in the current population, but also by

constructors and tourists coming in from outside. The "Sichuan Army" constitutes a definite proportion of the tide

of migrant laborers sweeping across the country. The Three Gorges project will cause these people to "make a quick

turn and counterthrust" (shahui maqiang) back in this direction. It will also attract migrant laborers from all over the

country to blindly flow into the Three Gorges region. All this will increase the population pressure within the Three

Gorges region. With a given crime rate, an increase in population implies an increase in the absolute number of

crimes. The vast majority of the floating population carry their property with them, and this increases the

opportunities for crime. The movement of a great number of people gives roving criminals the opportunity to mingle

among them. This will bring an increase in the number of crimes committed by such criminals and is a threat to

public security. The great majority of relocatees in the Three Gorges region will be moved upward and backward

(jiudi houkao) in the same area, and this will increase the population density of the areas of resettlement. Within the

dam area and its principal source of supplies for daily life, Yichang City, the population density will increase even

more markedly. Living conditions will be very crowded and the frequency of friction, contradictions, and conflicts

between people will increase. This will necessarily result in an increased crime rate and deterioration of security.

(b) Various corrupt phenomena will cause dissatisfaction on the part of the broad masses and will be an

important factor contributing to the lack of social peace.

(c) The lack of diversity of systems for [crime] prevention. Its main manifestations are that the ideology of

[crime] prevention is insufficiently strong among the masses, the role of basic level prevention organizations has not

been brought fully into play, all sectors of society lack a notion of comprehensive prevention, the work of exercising

comprehensive control over public security has not been fully implemented, and the prevention work of all of society

still relies on a single functional department [i.e. the police] going into battle alone. Having only a single system of

[crime] prevention causes a decrease in the power to control society and a broadening of the scope of lost control.

It makes it difficult to stay in control of the public security situation.

5. Problems Arising from Relocatees

(a) The problem of moving. The majority of relocatees support the Three Gorges project and want to sacrifice

for it. Some relocatees, however, are attached to the soil and unwilling to move. Even less are they willing to move

twice. A few relocatees have even made unreasonable demands and refused to move. These "nail households" (dingzi

hu) have brought difficulties to relocation work and can also cause security problems.

(b) The problem of compensation. The number of relocatees in the Three Gorges is large and the scope of

relocation is broad. Because the circumstances in each place are different, the compensation received by each

relocated household is unlikely to meet their expectations. Relocatees who believe that their compensation is

insufficient will become antagonistic. Because the standard for compensation in the dam area is different from that

in the reservoir area (those in the dam area receive more), there will be contradictions between relocatees living along

the border between the 