Thousands of people from Xinshi town will be relocated by mid 2012 for the construction of Xiangjiaba Dam.

By Xu Donghuan in Sichuan

The reluctant residents were considered tough nuts to crack. The resettlement group from the Pingshan county government had been stationed in Xinkai village, 100 kilometers southwest of Yibin, Sichuan Province, for 11 consecutive days, trying to persuade them to accept relocation terms. But firm and unyielding, the 17 remaining households were refusing to sign the contracts.

"I will be deprived of all my income source once I put my name on it," said 56-year-old Fan Daiyou, a grocery shop owner.

The Fan family is one of the 25 households in the village, whose doomed homes are under the 381-meter red water line that will be inundated when the Xiangjiaba Dam - still under construction on the Jinshajiang River - goes into operation in 2012.

The dam, 70 kilometers downstream from their village, will be the third largest dam in China in terms of its power-generating capacity, after the Three Gorges and Xiluodu dams. Xiluodu - 157 kilometers upstream on Jinshajiang River from Xiangjiaba - will be the second largest when construction is completed in 2015.

According to Fan, the relocation group insists on paying only 535 yuan ($80) per square meter for their 10-year-old, 600-square-meter house, a price it established in 2008, despite the fact that the housing market has gone up to 2,000 to 3,000 yuan per square meter over the last two years.

"With the compensation they offer us, our family cannot even afford a 50-square-meter apartment in the town they want to settle us," he said, sitting inside a spacious room of his four-story house which overlooks the river.

Among all the terms offered by the working group, Fan is particularly annoyed by its refusal to compensate him for his street shop, even though he has a business license issued by the government.

Settled in

Fan and his wife, 53-year-old Yang Yongjin, have been running the grocery store along the Route 307 provincial highway since 1996. In 2000, they rebuilt the shop into a four-story brick house, which functions as business on the ground floor, residence on the upper floors and a pigsty in the basement.

Besides the small shop, which sells pig feed and daily necessities for the villagers, pig farming can yield around 50,000 yuan a year for the family. Up on the hills, they also have a small plot of land with orange trees and corn. Over the years, the income from all these sources has enabled Fan and his wife to have small amount of savings after supporting their son's school studies in the county center and providing medical care for their eldest daughter who suffers from epilepsy.

When the government launched its "western development strategy" in 2000, Fan thought their business would be an easy ride and their lives would be better off.

Nanzheng Street, the market center of the centuries-old Pingshan county, will be flooded.

Pingshan county was on the national list of poverty-stricken areas. It was logical that the government would pump in more funds to help the mountainous region catch up with the developed coastal areas.

Then, in February 2003, came the order from the State Council to halt infrastructure construction within the inundation area of the proposed Xiangjiaba Dam. As the rest of China's western hinterlands benefited from the central government's 2,200 billion yuan of investment, everything was put on hold for the six counties in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, on both sides of Jinshajiang River.

In July 2006, the State Council issued No 471 Decree on Land Compensation and Resettlement for the Construction of Hydropower Projects.

Soon, the long-debated construction of Xiangjiaba Dam kicked off.

Reluctant to move

Across Pingshan county, around 60,000 people will be relocated. The new resettlement site is Ni'nan town, 50 kilometers to the north, in the Minjiang River valley. Although located in low hills and with easy access to Yibin city, Ni'nan isn't so inviting to Fan and his fellow villagers.

"Nobody wants to move from a fertile land to a place with less favorable natural conditions," said one of the villagers sitting beside Fan. "The climate is different, so is the culture."

They point out that the No 471 Decree says, "The State carries out the policy of resettlement for development, offers pre-migration compensation, subsidies and post-migration assistance, making sure that the lives of the migrants maintain or surpass the existing living standard."

"But with the current approach from the county government, we cannot gain anything. From hom-eowners, we will probably become homeless," said another villager.

Twenty-six kilometers upstream, the county center of Pingshan is in the same mood. The one-kilometer-long main shopping street was adorned with eye-catching red banners. "Serve Xiangjiaba and build new Pingshan," proclaimed one.

However, not so many residents seem to endorse the efforts of local government agencies.

Inside a dark-walled teahouse, frequented by the elderly, Su Qihui, 69, a retired employee from a tea plantation, said over a one-yuan cup of tea that "the policy of the central government is good, but it is no longer the same when it reaches the local level."

"They ask us to pay 60 percent as first installments for the new apartments at the resettlement town," he said. "But we are a poverty-stricken county. Few people can afford it."

At a kitchenware shop around the corner, owner Yang Pingzhen, 69, said business has been grim since they sealed the old part of the town in May 2009. "Many of my customers have moved else-where," she said. "Nobody will compensate us for the loss of business."

Fan Daiyou and his wife Yang Yongjin. Photos: Xu Donghuan

Closed shops

Walking downhill toward the river, Nanzheng Street, the former market center of the 440-year-old town, looked deserted. The flagstone pavement, smoothed by the feet of people over many generations, was covered with a thick layer of dust. Although the government has closed the street, a few shops are still in businesses.

"We don't know where to go," said Yang Heming, owner of a bedding shop. "It's hard to find another place for business."

Toward the other end of the town, the Pingshan County Resettlement Bureau is the government's main office for handling resettlement issues. Every Monday and Thursday, staff members are available to hand out resettlement pamphlets and answer questions from displaced migrants.

It was 9 am Tuesday, July 27. At the ground level of its four-story office building, a blackboard, which has the name tags of all the 82 staff members, indicated that bureau director Tan Zuorong and all his deputies were at their offices.

At the reception office on the top floor, a receptionist surnamed Liu insisted that all the leaders were in meetings and unavailable for an interview. After examining an introduction letter from the Global Times and the journalist identification card, she called the publicity department at the County Party Committee, which is a 10-minute walk away.

"Resettlement work has strong political nature, is extremely policy-guided and very sensitive," said Zeng Xianzhang, deputy director of the publicity department, over the phone. "Since the Hanyuan incident in October 2004, the provincial government has strict regulations on the coverage of resettlement for hydropower projects."

During the Hanyuan incident, 20,000 villagers protested the low resettlement compensation for the construction of the Pubugou Dam on the Daduhe River in western Sichuan. Upon requests from top Chinese officials, construction was later put off for a year.

'Not everybody-oriented'

After 40 minutes of waiting, the phone rang. It was Zeng again and he agreed to send an official for an interview.

Moments later, Wen Weifu, 32, who has been with the publicity department for two years, showed up. "From the Three Gorges Dam project, we learnt that resettlement is the No 1 difficult task," he said. "Our policies today are no doubt more humane than in 1995.

"But people-oriented does not mean everybody-oriented," he added.

He said that the majority of the displaced migrants are in a stable mood and that they see the resettle-ment as a golden opportunity for a better life. "In resettlement, we develop; in development, we resettle," he said.

However, unlike the perfect picture described by Wen, tensions are running high in Pingshan. Accord-ing to villagers, on June 2, displaced people from Loudong and Fuyan counties protested at the Xiangjiaba Dam Project office. A violent clash with police followed and dozens of people were injured.

Despite China's desperate need for clean energy from hydroelectric projects, many experts are critical of the human costs of building the dams.

Dai Qing, a veteran journalist and author from Beijing, believes the core of the problem lies in the way redevelopment funds have been channeled since the Three Gorges Dam relocation project. "In this way, the relocation funds from the central government cannot directly reach the hands of the people," she said. "This breeds corruption at various levels of the government."

Rush jobs

"Dams on the Jinshajiang River are decided in a rush. There is no serious study of the lessons from the Three Gorges project," she said.

Fan Xiao, the chief engineer of the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau in Chengdu, who aroused controversy in 2008 by pointing out the link between the Wenchuan earthquake and the Zipingba Dam built just miles from the epicenter, said hydropower projects are necessary, but there is a lack of democratic process in the decision-making.

"Compensation and resettlement are decided between the government and developers," he said. "It's inevitable the interests of the migrants are hampered."

Still, the local government at Pingshan says, "Resettlement must get started and dams are sure to be built."

There is not much time left for Fan Daiyou and his fellow villagers. Before the bulldozers come in September, they have to agree to the terms and sign the contract.

Fan, however, has a Plan B. After a lot of thought, he and his wife have decided to resettle his family elsewhere, on the other side of riverbank in Yunnan Province. This way, the family can get more compensation and they will start anew, at a place not so far from their home.

It will not come without difficulty, however. The family has no hukou, a household registration permit, so it's hard to predict what the future holds for them.

"It's like a fiery pit I have to jump into and I'm really worried," he said.