Three Gorges Dam: Reservoir Refugees and Human Costs
This paper examines the wide-ranging consequences of China's Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River — the largest dam project in history. Moving beyond the dam's engineering achievements, the paper analyzes the displacement of approximately 1.3 to 4 million people, systematic failures in resettlement planning, corruption, and human rights abuses. It also addresses the dam's environmental damage, public health risks including schistosomiasis, seismic concerns near active fault lines, and economic losses from submerged farmland, fisheries, and cultural heritage sites. Drawing on government reports, academic studies, and journalist accounts, the paper concludes that the dam represents a man-made disaster in progress, with negative consequences multiplying as China plans additional hydropower projects along the Yangtze and other rivers.
- Introduction: The Three Gorges Dam Project: Project scale, political origins, and cost overview
- Socio-Economic Impacts: Villages submerged, species lost, displacement figures
- Resettlement Issues: Corruption, inadequate compensation, and suppressed dissent
- Human Rights and Economic Issues: Rights abuses, submerged farmland, fisheries, and economic losses
- Man-Made Disaster Risks: Dam safety, fault lines, and seismic danger
- Displacing Millions More: Plans to relocate four million additional residents
- Public Health and Environmental Impact: Disease risk, drought, pollution, and ecological damage
- Human Costs and the Relocation Plan: Resettlement plan history, failures, and challenges ahead
- Conclusion: Independent assessment and recommendations for the future
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What makes this paper effective
- Integrates diverse source types — government statements, academic studies, journalist accounts, and engineering assessments — to build a multi-dimensional critique of the Three Gorges project.
- Uses specific data points (e.g., 1,350 submerged villages, 600-yuan subsidies, 37 million dollars embezzled) to ground broad claims in concrete evidence.
- Balances critical analysis with brief acknowledgment of the dam's genuine benefits, strengthening the paper's overall credibility.
- Effectively employs a first-hand narrative quotation near the end to give a human face to abstract statistics.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates sustained synthesis across a wide range of sources, weaving together governmental admissions, sociological research, engineering assessments, and eyewitness testimony into a coherent argument. Rather than treating each source in isolation, the author shows how each one reinforces or complicates the others — for example, pairing official Chinese government statements with independent audit findings and journalistic evidence to expose contradictions.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with political context and project scale before moving through distinct thematic sections: socio-economic displacement, resettlement failures and corruption, human rights abuses, economic losses, man-made disaster risks, secondary displacement of additional millions, public health and environmental damage, and historical resettlement planning failures. It closes with a policy-oriented conclusion drawing on Peter Bosshard's independent evaluation. This thematic organization allows each dimension of harm to be developed fully before the conclusion draws them together.
Introduction: The Three Gorges Dam Project
The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River is the largest project of its kind ever undertaken in human history. It has also been the costliest in more ways than simply the amount of money spent to build it — approximately 80 billion U.S. dollars. The dam can generate 18,000 megawatts of electricity. The intent of former Premier Li Peng, the driving force behind the dam in the early 1990s, was to rebuild his own political legacy after the disastrous events at Tiananmen Square in 1989. He claimed the dam would "inspire people but also demonstrate the greatness of the achievement of China's development" (Thai News Service, 2009).
Socio-Economic Impacts
Beyond the financial cost, the dam's other costs are equally staggering. During construction, 1,350 villages were submerged and 1.3 million people were displaced. Damming the river changed the ecology of the Yangtze to such a significant degree that certain species of sturgeon and dolphin are now virtually extinct. Commercial fisheries — not only on the Yangtze, but also in the East China Sea — have declined considerably. Fresh water supplies have been polluted, and there has been an increased risk from both landslides and earthquakes (Thai News Service, 2009).
Resettlement Issues
Other estimates of the number of people needing to be resettled push the 1.3 million figure up to between 1.6 million and 1.9 million. This number is evenly split between urban and rural residents, making new farmland and urban employment significant resettlement challenges (HRIC, n.d., p. 2).
The first shovelful of dirt was lifted in 1994, and almost immediately, problems with resettlement became apparent. Though official government sources insisted that things were going smoothly, they were not. Mismanagement, corruption, inadequate compensation, and shortages of farmland and urban jobs were among the most significant issues.
On the part of the residents being resettled, there was widespread resentment and resistance — a crisis of major proportions that portended serious trouble as the project continued (HRIC, n.d.). Additionally, there appears to have been severe repression of those who had the audacity to complain about being swindled or mistreated after being relocated to inadequate areas with barren hillsides, poor farming soil, and insufficient water supplies.
The problems of resettlement had become so pervasive that in mid-2006, the Chinese government announced a program to subsidize resettled farmers 600 yuan ($74 U.S.) per year for 20 years. It was hoped this would put a lid on the ever-bubbling discontent. Each farmer who had moved prior to July 1, 2006 received the supplement. For those still in the process of moving at the time, the subsidy began after resettlement (Haggart & Lan, 2006).
Journalist Dai Qing, a long-standing vocal critic of the Three Gorges Dam, argues, "In my view, the new subsidy will discourage people affected by dams from coming forward to voice their problems and to vehemently defend their rights" (Haggart & Lan, 2006), suggesting that the Chinese government is effectively buying silence.
This history of problems with the Chinese government resettling its population for water projects is nothing new. Since the late 1940s, approximately ten million people have been relocated, often resulting in significant confrontation between those being moved and those doing the moving.
A 1998 investigation conducted by a noted Chinese sociologist with broad experience researching water project resettlements identified several additional problems with the Three Gorges Dam resettlement. These included systematic corruption and misuse of resettlement funds — such that significant amounts of subsidy yuan never reached resettled people — as well as discrimination against rural residents in the allocation of resources. The investigation also found a failure to provide coordinated, adequate information to migrant families, and almost no consultation with the populations to be resettled (Three Gorges Dam — the human cost, n.d.).
The Chinese government even went so far as to present "model resettlers" (yimin dianxin) to the press and visiting dignitaries as typical examples of happy, satisfied families. Some had even opened small shops in addition to enjoying new homes, well-paid jobs, and adequate compensation. However, each model resettler cost the central government almost four times the amount available for the average household relocation. One must wonder what will happen to future resettlers, given that the total resettlement budget is fixed while millions remain to be relocated (HRIC, n.d., p. 3).
In just one more example of the drastic attempts at deception: when Premier Li Peng visited a town about to be resettled, many residents were upset over inadequate compensation and had organized petition drives. While Li Peng was in the area, those residents were banned from attending a meeting with the Premier, and "substitutes" were brought in to pose as satisfied resettlers (HRIC, n.d., p. 3).
In early 2007, the government announced a further resettlement plan for some of the farmers previously resettled, in a further attempt to address discord and "cure poverty, unemployment and environmental hazards in the area" (Reuters, 2009). The plan included a statement on the central government's website acknowledging that previous plans had "fallen short" and left some displaced residents jobless and "exposed to dangerous geological jolts."
"Problems left over from migration and resettlement must be dealt with in detail, helping migrants to solve the real hardships and problems in their work and lives," the statement continued, "and building a harmonious and stable dam area" (Reuters, 2009).
This was a surprisingly complete refutation of their earlier statements, though it was couched in ecological terms, suggesting that some portion of the migrants were being removed to solve erosion and pollution issues. The statement did not address the enormous costs involved in this "re-resettlement."
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