A Watershed Role for Farmers

Ge Quanxiao is no revolutionary. The 58-year-old farmer is an upstanding member of his community, a father of two. But if you push reasonable people too far, he warns, they’re forced to do desperate things.

The government in Beijing is pushing a lot of reasonable people to the wall these days, especially here in southwestern China’s Yunnan province, where three parallel rivers course their way to the sea. Ravenous for energy to feed a booming economy, China plans to build more than 100 dams in this area, including a couple of dozen that would surpass Washington state’s 550-foot-high Grand Coulee dam and one that would be the tallest in the world.

The projects would force nearly 1 million people off their land in coming years.

Pent-up anger and frustration boiled over in late October when as many as 90,000 people in neighboring Sichuan province rioted over land seizures for the dam network. The chaos lasted several days until the army arrived to restore order.

China, home to the Three Gorges Dam, is no stranger to huge hydroelectric projects and their staggering human costs. What’s different this time, experts say, is an awakening among many farmers in the bulldozer’s path.

In the past, those at the bottom of society were routinely pushed, tricked and beaten off their land by local authorities using divide-and-conquer tactics and exploiting local ignorance. Although these practices continue, rural experts say that with advances in the Internet and other media, farmers have learned the lessons from the 12-year battle over Three Gorges and are more knowledgeable about protecting their rights.

“They’re getting information from many different channels and are increasingly well informed,” said Xiao Liangzhong, an anthropologist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Xiao specializes in the Three Parallel Rivers area where the Yangtze, Nu and Lancang flow within 60 miles of one another.

Take Ge. The unassuming farmer never thought much about matters beyond the Yangtze’s Tiger Leaping Gorge area he calls home until late 2003, when local officials arrived one day and started assigning a monetary value to the land farmers had tilled for generations. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the area was on someone’s appropriation list.

Unable to get a straight answer from government agencies or the two local dam companies involved, the state-owned China Huaneng Group and the privately held Beijing-based Huarui Group, Ge and his friends started pooling information with nearby river towns. They figured they stood a better chance of prevailing if they were unified.

They forged links with local and international environmental groups, went to the media and even tried to pit different branches of government against one another in a bid to stop, slow or redirect construction.

“We’re trying to bring together farmers, government officials and the dam company to talk early on so there’s less conflict,” said Yu Xiaogang, director of Green Watershed, an environmental group helping farmers in the Three Parallel Rivers area. “Everyone will have a greater stake if there’s more participation in decision-making.”

At a United Nations forum on hydropower and sustainable development in Beijing in late October, Chinese officials expected to hear the usual statistics-filled speeches by experts. They got all that, but they also saw Ge and four other farmers take the stage and, in reasoned presentations, argue for a closer look at the social costs of dams.

Hearing from those affected by a project is standard in the West. But it’s the exception in China, where the Communist Party has traditionally dictated what’s best for the people.

Officials met the farmers afterward, thanked them and promised to rethink their views.

Farmers are also drawing inspiration from President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, known for their populist approach and recent move to reduce rural taxes. And they hope the recent Sichuan uprising, which has led to a temporary halt in construction and the firing of two local officials, will prompt a reevaluation of China’s growth-at-any-cost policies. But Beijing remains highly wary of popular unrest, especially among peasants angered by the widening wealth gap.

“Every country has problems relocating people,” said Qin Hui, a rural expert at Beijing’s Qinghua University. “But a more democratic approach, something that China still needs to work on, would go a long way to easing tensions.”

Back in Chezhou, a town of 2,000 nestled on the banks of the Yangtze, Ge and his neighbors sat on stools a few inches off the ground and mulled their future as dusk fell. Warmed by a cooking fire fueled by corncobs, they discussed the very real possibility that they would lose everything to a foe they couldn’t see or fully understand but which they doubted was playing fair.

“The whole thing feels like a freight train coming at us that’s very difficult to stop,” Ge said. “Chinese peasants are often quiet and tolerant, but once we know our rights, we fight hard for them.”

The freight train is clearly on the move. A few miles away in Tiger Leaping Gorge, government-paid workers repairing roads are also tunneling into the side of the majestic cliffs, reportedly testing the geology to ensure they can hold billions of gallons of water. Farther afield, behind a road now blocked to traffic, the farmers have watched as giant blocks of stone, blasted off canyon walls, tumble hundreds of feet into the Yangtze.

Officials with the central and provincial governments, regional water agencies and the Huarui Group declined to comment or were unavailable. But the government has said the dam network is essential to China’s development.

“Big hydroelectric projects tend to flood good farmland,” said Wen Tiejun, rural development professor with the People’s University in Beijing. “But still it needs to be done. Farmers will benefit from urbanization eventually.”

Zhou Chengwen, a spokesman with the China Huaneng Group, said no decision had been made on which communities would be relocated, noting that the government had yet to award the contract. Those involved would follow all applicable regulations, he said.

Analysts say the central government has the final say on dams and other major building projects, although provincial officials have some leeway in carrying them out and figuring out how to maximize their revenue.

Ge and others said they believed the central government was on their side and hoped Beijing could help put pressure on local officials. Ge said he didn’t fear being sent to jail or punished for speaking out because he was not taking a political stand or opposing the central government. On the contrary, he said, he was trying to help Beijing avoid social conflict between government agencies and the farmers.

China has no freedom of information laws, and government officials, who are not elected, do not face pressure to respond to citizens’ concerns. People have had to tease information out of indirect sources, relatives working in the government and obscure reports, to try to anticipate their adversary’s next move.

“Their plan is to flood us out of our homes, leaving us no room for negotiation,” said Yao Shuxian, 52, another local farmer. “The chance of finding good land like this is zero, absolutely impossible.”

The residents point to evidence of stealth planning. This pristine area known as the Shangri-la of China with its whitewater rivers, snowcapped peaks and striking scenery is an official World Heritage Site. It turns out that the provincial government’s application for the prestigious U.N. designation covered only land at an elevation higher than 2,000 yards, apparently to blunt the expected global criticism once the valleys are flooded.

There are also rumors that local officials have secured the rights to new lakefront property high in the mountains.

The farmers also learned what the government planned to offer them: land even farther up the slopes on steep, scratchy forest land with no irrigation. The fertile fields they now till on the valley floor produce bountiful crops of rice and wheat. They estimated that those above would yield less than half as much.

As the men sat chain-smoking and eating walnuts, they reflected on the cost of obliterating communities such as Chezhou that have been here for centuries. These are the kind of towns where everyone pitches in to support a widow, fight a fire or lend a hand to neighbors fixing their farm equipment. Where memories are long and one knows everyone by name. Where people help others build houses even if there’s nothing in it for them because their children may need something when the next generation rolls around.

They also questioned how the compensation and relocation plan, should it come to that, would be even remotely fair. They’ve heard numerous stories of local officials claiming that prime farmland is barely fertile to avoid paying a fair price.

They worry about the environmental and cultural degradation as water is trapped behind concrete walls, silting up valleys and burying artifacts on a stretch of river that has seen conquering forces come and go, from Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes to Mao Tse-tung’s People’s Liberation Army.

But most of all, they worry about the same things farmers worry about everywhere -- the loss of something precious, their link to the power of the earth, a love born of tending something season after season with the knowledge it will support their children and their children’s children.

“We peasants are among the weakest in society,” Ge said. “The land is our life. If we’re forced off, only our tears will remain.”

Yin Lijin of The Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.