The biggest change of the policy has been the addition of the human-oriented aspect. Now we have to respect the opinions of the people when resettling them (Official from township resettlement bureau in Pu’er, 13 February 2013).
For the Yunnan provincial government and the corresponding resettlement bureau the central level policy update meant to design more specific regulations which would make the broad central policies applicable to the local situation in Yunnan.
This is why in 2008, the provincial government issued opinions on implementing the new resettlement regulations published by the State Council (Yunnan Government, 2008). Accordingly, in 2008 Pu’er government also issued new regulations
governing resettlement work within its jurisdiction, thereby replacing the city’s former 2004 policy (Pu'er Government, 2008).
Resettlement officials on the county and township government level in Pu’er are the ones responsible for undertaking the relocation of migrant communities. In order to come to terms with the new demands introduced by policy changes in the field of
dam-induced resettlement, and the need to relocate migrants according to the tight schedules specified by project developers without causing social instability, local governments have begun to devise a variety of strategies to convince migrants to leave their homes, and relocate to new villages.
The changes of local government behavior brought about by resettlement policy change can be summarized as follows:
Increase in propaganda and thought work by county and township level governments: Local cadres now spend extensive periods of time in villages about to be resettled. Through brochures and meetings, migrants learn about China’s hydropower strategy, the dam for which they have to relocate, the relocation process and relevant laws.
Expansion of grassroots government work after resettlement: First, individual cadres are made responsible for smooth resettlement processes of the villages.
The system of sent-down cadres is now also applied to resettlement. In addition, in order to strengthen political work in resettlement villages, local governments have begun to recruit dam migrants into the resettlement bureaucracy.
Introduction of participatory rights for resettlement communities: Migrants now get the choice to decide about certain aspects of the resettlement process, including resettlement mode and resettlement village.
Responsiveness of local government to migrant demands: There has been an increase in negotiations between local cadres and migrant communities as regards resettlement processes. Rather than suppressing migrant protests, local cadres try as much as possible to solve societal demands.
The major reason for why local cadres follow the newly introduced resettlement
policy instead of sticking to former measures of hard coercion is the design of the cadre evaluation mechanism.
Just like in other policy fields, local governments have to sign an annual
responsibility agreement with their superiors, determining the targets that need to be achieved within one year. In the case of dam-induced resettlement, the agreements set out the general responsibilities of the government during the resettlement processes, including the number of people that have to be resettled within one year as well as the necessity to fulfill new policy goals, such as the yiren weiben principle (State Council 2006a; Interview, NE120218).6 In addition to these agreements, in recent years, resettlement bureaucrats have begun to introduce the “one-item veto rule” (一票否决) into resettlement administration, meaning that if local
governments do not meet designated targets, achievements in all other policy fields are offset, seriously limiting local cadres’ chances of political advancement. In particularly this applies to the number of letters and visits a government unit
receives from dam migrants (e.g. Yunnan Government, 2012). Thus, in order to keep complaints by migrants at a minimum, local cadres increasingly tend to give in to migrant demands, and to ensure smooth resettlement processes.
Apart from the cadre management system, another reason for why local cadres have begun to implement soft policy targets in the course of dam-induced resettlement processes is the stark increase in cadre training programs on ‘human-oriented’
resettlement which have raised awareness among local officials that “military-style”
relocation campaigns are unable to contribute to successful resettlement results, and that social instability caused by dam migrants is a serious political issue (Interviews,
6 For an in-depth analysis of environmental performance evaluations, see Heberer and Senz
NJ130304; SM110812).
In the following, the new strategies applied by local governments during resettlement processes will be presented in more detail.
Propaganda and Thought Work
Preparations of resettlement work for the Nuozhadu Dam began in 2002, when the local government began to compile an inventory of all the objects located and people residing within the future construction and reservoir areas (Simao Local History Committee, 2003: 163). The recording of the inventory was organized by county governments which, in turn, ordered township and village cadres to
undertake the survey work in their respective jurisdictions. Depending on property ownership, cadres had to sign an agreement with each household and village collective confirming the value of all objects to be compensated and the number of people eligible for resettlement compensation. In addition, each migrant household had to sign an agreement confirming their willingness to resettle before a specified date.
In order to inform villagers about the upcoming resettlement process and get them to sign the agreement, one local government team was responsible for ‘propaganda and thought work,’ which included several rounds of meetings with the entire village population, and, more recently, also the distribution of a booklet that introduces China’s hydropower strategy, the Nuozhadu Project as well as the resettlement process and related policies. According to the booklet, throughout the resettlement process, every migrant has the right to participation, information, choice, expression, and supervision. First of all, migrants have the right to participate in the processes of preparing and revising the property investigation as well as the compensation and
resettlement plans. They furthermore have the right to choose their preferred mode of resettlement, and to supervise the usage of compensation paid out to the collective.
Moreover, migrants are entitled to participate and supervise the implementation of official policies by local cadres. In case, policies are not implemented to migrants’
satisfaction, or other problems occur during the resettlement process, migrants have the right to appeal in accordance with the law. In return, migrants have to comply with all laws, rules and regulations related to their resettlement. They also have the responsibility to support national construction projects, and follow all related requests to give up farmland and/ or move out of their homes. During the whole resettlement process, migrants should actively participate and support resettlement work (Pu’er Resettlement Bureau, 2011).
In addition, about one year before relocation began, representatives from district, township and village governments came to the village to introduce the national hydropower strategy, and to explain the necessity to construct the Nuozhadu Dam, asking future migrants to support the state’s efforts. The group consisted of twenty to thirty local cadres who frequently came to the village for a period of one year. It was their task to hold meetings both with village representatives and with the whole community. Additionally, they walked from door to door to speak with affected households individually.
One villager explains:
Before our move, the working group came to the village every day for at least two months. They held meetings every single day to tell us about the greatness of the new dam they were about to build. The government was especially warm [热情] to us so we believed them everything. They told us that everything would be fine after resettlement and that they would take care of all potential
this is a state project (Interview, NDH1208032).
As is the case with most people who are informed about the fact that they have to leave their houses and move to a new home, the villagers at first did not want to be relocated, and refused to sign the resettlement agreement with the local government.
According to the group leader (组长) of one resettlement village, in the process of the negotiations between the government and the migrants, the former has applied a particularly skillful tactic to convince the latter to move. The group leader calls the tactic “cheat, fool, threat (骗，哄，吓):”
Pian refers to the fact that the government told us that the resettlement village we were about to move to was a particularly nice place where men can find beautiful women, and where it would even be possible for them to have more than one women at a time. […] All in all they told us that the region of the resettlement village is especially fun [很好玩]. […] Hong means that in the beginning the government was very nice to us, and gave us a lot of benefits which later on they deducted from our resettlement compensation. So before the move, in order to convince us that resettlement is good for us, the government gave us 2000 yuan per mu of contracted land, and told us that this was a special advantage that we would be granted. The cadres called this money ‘field input subsidy [园地投入补助费].’ It was paid out to the collective. So the collective received a large amount of money which made us very happy. That’s why we thought it’s not such a bad thing to move. However, later, after resettlement, the government deducted this field input subsidy from the compensation they still owed us. So in the end that wasn’t a special benefit at all. They just paid it out early to convince us to move. […] Xia refers to the threats from the government in case we didn’t comply with their request to leave our homes. They threatened
us by force. So in the beginning they were really nice, and used sweet words to convince us, but they always added that, if we dare to resist, they had no choice but to make us leave by other means (Interview, ZW130217).
What is worth noting here is that first, the local government emphasizes the scale of the dam project, its importance for China as a country, and the fact that the project is initiated by the central government. In that way, local governments try to win over the hearts of the migrants, and attempt to make them feel as part of a larger
undertaking designed to further the nation’s future development. It can be assumed that cadres deliberately stress the state’s role in the dam project rather than that of large energy corporations that are actually behind these schemes (Interview, KM130222). In doing so, cadres appeal to the migrants’ identity as citizens of the PRC which they are now given the opportunity to serve. Second, cadres make sure to be particularly friendly to the villagers, and built up a good relationship with them.
This is to increase the trust of the people into the government, and to lower the likelihood of villagers to resist resettlement, and accompanying government demands.
However, a nonresistant migrant community before and during relocation has not been the only consequence of local government propaganda work. Instead, there have been instances in which migrants made use of information provided by the local government to advance their own claims with regard to resettlement. For example, in 2008, the deputy township head visited the village as part of an
investigation on the current situation of resettlement preparation. During a meeting with the villagers, the deputy made sure that the overall spirit for resettlement was positive, additionally encouraging the villagers to comply with the local
government’s resettlement plans. Additionally, he reassured future migrants of the
reasons for this was a new policy that central and provincial governments were currently working on and which was going to be implemented in the resettlement village. The policy he was referring to was the long-term compensation mechanism (长效补偿补助)7 which compared to the formerly dominant big agricultural resettlement (大农业安置) does only provide for the allocation of a small area of land after resettlement, and instead supports migrants financially over a period of up to fifty years depending on the time of operation of the hydropower station in the course of which resettlement took place (Du, Zhong et al., 2011: 27). The deputy township head introduced the mechanism and explained how it would serve as an additional source of income for those who continued to cultivate land or took up jobs in the city, and how it would be especially suitable for the older generation who might rather want to retire than continue to work on their fields.
However, when the deputy head propagated this innovation of the government for resettlement villages, the long-term compensation mechanism was not an official policy, yet, but was merely in the process of being discussed by the provincial government and hydropower companies in Yunnan. When the villagers were subsequently relocated, the mechanism was only being implemented as an
experimental program in certain resettlement villages along the middle reaches of the Jinsha River in northern Yunnan (Yunnan Government, 2007) as well as in Lancang County in Pu’er (Lancang Government, 2008).
Therefore, when the deputy head propagated the new policy, the mechanism was only being implemented on a small scale, without any detailed implementing guidelines for how long-term compensation was to be realized in the area affected
7 The official name for this locally developed mechanism is the “16118 Resettlement
by the Nuozhadu project in Simao. Nevertheless, after hearing about the new policy, the migrants wanted the policy to be implemented in their village which is why they began to pressure the local government.
What is interesting to note here is how the deputy head used the long-term compensation mechanism as a tool to convince farmers of the advantages
accompanying resettlement without even knowing how or whether the mechanism would benefit migrants at all. Little did he expect the perseverance with which the villagers continue until this day to pressure the local government towards
implementing the long-term compensation mechanism. Thus, in the present case, the impact of the increased flow of information from the government towards the
migrants has been twofold.
One the one hand, the propagation of China’s hydropower strategy and the
importance of the Nuozhadu Dam for Pu’er and China more generally, have lowered resistance against resettlement among the migrants. All villagers that have been interviewed argue that they do not mind resettlement as such, but wish that the government would fairly implement resettlement policies designed to support migrants before, during, and after relocation. On the other hand, this provision of information has caused migrants to follow up on the process of implementation, and make sure that the local government actually acts according to what they originally promised. Thus, while the increased intensity of ‘propaganda and thought work’ in policy implementation may cheat migrants into leaving their homes without
resistance, thereby undermining their right to know, the bits of information provided on resettlement policy have at the same time also increased migrants’ knowledge about how resettlement is supposed to be implemented. Even if some of the policy details given by the governmental working group were incorrect, the migrants did
Grassroots Government Work After Resettlement
Before, during, and after resettlement street-level bureaucrats play a major role in the resettlement process. Especially those villages that are considered as more conflict-prone receive a higher degree of attention from local governments.
Grassroots government and party work in resettlement villages takes up three different forms. First of all, local cadres employed in the resettlement bureaucracy are responsible for resettlement villages within their jurisdictions. Second, in order to strengthen political work in resettlement villages, local governments in Pu’er have begun to recruit dam migrants into the resettlement bureaucracy. Third, the system of sent-down cadres has been applied which refers to urban officials “adopting villages (包村)” and helping them during the process of adaptation after resettlement.
Work units and departments at all levels of the Chinese party state take part in village adoption, creating opportunities for economic development in poor village communities. Apart from fostering industrial development by improving local infrastructure, sent-down cadres also have the responsibility to bolster local Party organization. As such, the cadre is tasked with ameliorating the oftentimes
antagonistic relationship between rural communities and local governments, and with “stitch[ing] up the torn garment that is Chinese [rural] society” (Rolandsen, 2012: 69).
Hostility between local governments and rural masses, as well as conflicts within local communities are particularly prevalent in resettlement communities that are mostly dissatisfied with resettlement work undertaken by local governments. In addition, dam migrants often find it difficult to rebuilt livelihoods in their new
environments. Due to these reasons, in Pu’er, government departments adopt resettlement villages, making each official of those departments responsible for a group of households within each village (帮户).8 The officials regularly visit the villages where they speak to the households that have been assigned to them. Their work mostly revolves around helping migrants adapt to their new environments both socially, and in terms of their productive activities.
In addition, county and township governments dispatch working groups (工作组) that are stationed in the villages for certain periods of time after resettlement. These working groups have a similar function to the dispatched cadres. However, while the latter additionally carry out their daily tasks within their work unit, working groups are stationed in one village permanently, and within that time, are only concerned with this particular village. In one of the villages visited for this research, a working group was stationed for about one year after the resettlement process had been completed. The group consisted of ten officials from various departments of the local government who came to the village on a daily basis to talk to the villagers and monitor the process of adaptation. During their time of duty, the cadres went from household to household to inquire about migrant problems. This method of sending down officials is not applied in all resettlement villages, but rather in those villages with a greater number of problems which, in the eyes of local officials, have the potential to jeopardize social stability.
The third method of the local government to get a better hold of the migrant
community is to recruit village group leaders into their resettlement bureaucracy to make them directly responsible for social stability within their resettlement
8 Usually, one department is responsible for one village, and each cadre within that department
community. This was a constantly used method to prevent social instability and migrant protest. In Menglian (孟连) County, for example, three dam migrants act as deputy township governor, deputy village party branch secretary, and assistant director of the resettlement village, respectively. Officially, this effort is to solve conflicts between local governments and migrant communities, as migrants themselves are supposed to act as intermediaries between the two groups, and are expected to have a greater understanding of both government and migrant
community. This was a constantly used method to prevent social instability and migrant protest. In Menglian (孟连) County, for example, three dam migrants act as deputy township governor, deputy village party branch secretary, and assistant director of the resettlement village, respectively. Officially, this effort is to solve conflicts between local governments and migrant communities, as migrants themselves are supposed to act as intermediaries between the two groups, and are expected to have a greater understanding of both government and migrant