By Megan E. Dodge
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

BEIJING, China – An official from the Xinhua News Agency announced today that citizens in Hubei and Henan provinces are being relocated from their homes near the Danjiangkou reservoir. Approximately 330,000 people in central China are being dislocated to make way for a massive project to divert water hundreds of miles for a sluice to be built to divert water from the Yangtze river and its tributaries.

The project is estimated to cost $62 billion, which is nearly three times as much as it cost to construct the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydroelectric project. When the diversion project is complete, three routes will move billions of tons of water from China’s central, southern and western regions through pipes and canals to flow into Beijing and other fast-growing northern cities. The central route is due for completion by 2014, and is expected to supply about a quarter of Beijing’s water.

In a photograph taken in January, a motorist passes a signboard promising safe water for people on display near a water canal link to the South-to-North Water Diversion Project located in Zhengzhou, Henan province, China. Photograph courtesy of Miami Herald.  

Critics of the project have warned the water diversion will cause environmental damage and still not be sufficient to quench the thriving thirst of Beijing and other heavily populated cities. Moreover, opponents are concerned with the displacement that has begun to resettle citizens.

Resettlement, of about 330,000 people, has already begun, and is expected to be complete by 2011, according to official in Xinhua (in reference to reports by an report issued by Henan provincial authorities). Families have been told that they will be compensated for the cost of their immovable property, and be relocated to arable land. Citizens have also been told that their new villages will receive an annual subsidy of 600 yuan ($88) per person for the next twenty years. 

Human rights activists share concern over the forced agreement to relocate that was apparently forced upon them. Some citizens came forth stating that some resistant villagers were forced to sign a document indicating they were willing to resettle. Villagers expressed concern because they were being offered less than half the land they currently used for farming and other means of income.

The present water diversion project has been compared to the Three Gorges Dam, which forced over 1.4 million people to move. That project caused surrounding villages to be flooded in order to permit a 410 mile (660 kilometer) long reservoir to allow for a dam to be constructed on the middle of the Yangtze river. Here, though the number of displaced civilians is not as high, the same concerns and worries arise as people affected by the water diversion project face relocation and possible unequal and forced resettlement.

For more information, please see:

China Daily – China pushes international co-op in water sectors – October 19, 2009

Times of India – China to relocate 330,000 people for massive water diversion project – October 18, 2009 

China Review – Resettlement of 330,000 people starts to make way for China’s water diversion project  – October 18, 2009  

Yahoo! World News – China starts resettling 330,000 for water project – October 18, 2009