Today a provincial gov’t announced a new relocation project that would move 2.8 million people from their homes, nearly twice as many as were moved for the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. This project though is not to clear the way for a massive new infrastructure project, but is instead aimed at poverty alleviation and avoiding disasters.
The project is looking to move people from rural Shaanxi to some of the larger towns and cities, and will no doubt be a topic of debate over the next few years.
The argument the gov’t makes is that this project could help to limit some of China’s rural problems. By moving rural people to larger towns it would improve access to medical care and education, with the possibility of providing local jobs that would keep families closer together. The People’s Daily article found a few farmers who were very optimistic about what this might mean for them (surprisingly they didn’t interview anyone against it).
Almost all of the people being moved are living in desperate poverty in a region that seems especially unforgiving. It seems like almost any project would improve their standing, however similar things were said during China’s last great relocation.
During the Three Gorges Dam project farmers were relocated from the small villages where their fields were, to newly built towns. They were given a small monthly allowance, a new apartment, and a little job training (this is also what is happening on a smaller scale every time a new factory, railroad, or airport is built here, and is what happened to many families after the Sichuan Earthquake).
Often the people who are relocated realize that they do not have the abilities needed to find new jobs, and have no farm land to return to, and that they sold their land for far too little money. In many cases they end up worse off than when they were farming since they are cut off from access to the capital they could have used to pull themselves out of poverty.
These relocation projects have become so unpopular that they have lead to large scale protests in dozens of provinces throughout China. The government has also had to step in to urge police not to assist local governments in forcing people out of their homes.
These projects often turn out poorly because there are rarely 2.8 million low skilled jobs available for these farmers who are adapting to a completely new life.
If this project is met with little resistance from the locals, than I worry that this could become a new trend. Building projects like this show up in local officials GDP numbers which lead to nice promotions. It also raises the question which China will have to address in these next few decades, Can the physical location of a village doom its residents to a life of poverty?
Thanks for the story.
The relocation in Ningxia caused a lot of problems too.
We will have to wait to see if the goverment’s intentions come to reality.
It will be a long time until we see the results, but it’s an interesting attempt.
Never mind, just found the true reason behind it, trillions of dollars in resources are located in those regions. Mining companies are paying billions to move the peasants out of the way.
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/7379302.html
[…] Today a provincial gov’t announced a new relocation project that would move 2.8 million people from their homes, nearly twice as many as were moved for the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. This project though is not to clear … Continue reading → […]
I think the underlying discussion here is whether the government can actually help people via diktat. Oddly enough, this sort of reminds me of the infamous 5-year plans common to many communist nations setting out goals to be met for their respective countries. The problem is that, while they were wonderful sounding goals, there was rarely a reasonable path to successful completion – often, they ended with wonderful platitudes of success while the results on the ground rarely matched the rhetoric. In most cases, they were dismal failures.
There is an interesting corollary in many democratic nations, too (sadly, this is an issue that is not local to China) that argues for greater government intervention in the lives of their citizens. Whether it can be made to work is often, as yet, undetermined. Sure, there may be local successes but, as you’ve pointed out here, there are usually more failures. China especially, in recent years, is replete with those examples and they’re only made worse because it appears that no lessons are being learned – or, if they are learned, they are usually ignored.
This may be further discussed in a later post, but the Chinese gov’t makes mandates for success, but gives no outline for how to meet those targets. Since they are often such ambitious mandates, they are usually faked.
[…] Tuesday I reported briefly on Shaanxi’s plan to relocate 2.7 million residents from the northern and southern parts of the province. The local gov’t reported that this was […]