Why has the Resettlement Program not been so successful?
(i) Corruption
There have been several complaints of widespread local corruption, saying that Resettlement funds aren't reaching the intended recipients and thus corruption scandals have plagued the project.
GOVERNMENT ACTION: After Premier Zhu left the Three Gorges area, the authorities engaged some 200 outside experts to act as inspectors to try and curb the corruption. The effort was chiefly directed towards guaranteeing the quality of the construction work and not the resettlement process. Aside from this, the municipality of Chongqing went through the motions of holding a customary Chinese police crackdown including setting up special telephone lines for the public to report crimes connected with the misuse of resettlement funds and graft activities by officials of the dam project. Around 200 officials were detained and questioned, leading to a number of highly publicized cases. And perhaps as many as 100 officials were punished.
STATISTICS OF CORRUPTION:
- It was believed that contractors had won bids through bribery and then skimped on equipment and materials to siphon off construction funds.
- The head of the Three Gorges Economic Development Corp. allegedly sold jobs in his company, took out project-related loans and disappeared with the money in May 2000.
- Officials from the Three Gorges Resettlement Bureau were caught embezzling funds from resettlement programs in January 2000.
- Local authorities appear to have diverted a large part of the resettlement budget into unrelated infrastructure projects, using funds intended for household compensation on projects like hotels and roads.
GOVERNMENT ACTION: After Premier Zhu left the Three Gorges area, the authorities engaged some 200 outside experts to act as inspectors to try and curb the corruption. The effort was chiefly directed towards guaranteeing the quality of the construction work and not the resettlement process. Aside from this, the municipality of Chongqing went through the motions of holding a customary Chinese police crackdown including setting up special telephone lines for the public to report crimes connected with the misuse of resettlement funds and graft activities by officials of the dam project. Around 200 officials were detained and questioned, leading to a number of highly publicized cases. And perhaps as many as 100 officials were punished.
STATISTICS OF CORRUPTION:
- In 1999, the Xinhua news agency reported that there were 140 corruption cases relating to the project, which involved billions of yuan.
- Soon after that, the General State Auditor made the findings of an investigation public. “Some 473 million yuan in resettlement funds were embezzled, misappropriated or illegally used in 1998 alone,” Xinhua reported, adding that “those punished included Huang Faxiang, a land management official in Fengdu County, near Chongqing in Sichuan, who was executed early this year for the embezzlement of 15.56 million yuan.” Huang reportedly invested the embezzled money in a local hotel.
- The amount of 473 million yuan, is equivalent to 12 percent of the total resettlement budget, which is a considerable sum.
- However, officials subsequently issued repeated reassurances that most of this money had been retrieved.
- In March 2000 the Vice Mayor of Chongqing, Gan Yuping, said 80 percent of the siphoned money had been recovered.
Shortages in Compensations and Job Oppurtunities
|
Corruption within the government is a major reason as to why the Resettlement program has not been so successful, and although the government has made efforts to reduce this (which have worked to a certain extent), it still goes on. Furthermore, other reasons as to why the program isn’t so successful are related to the lack of funds, jobs and land. This shows that the government relocation program isn’t as detailed and doesn’t cover as many aspects as it was said to have, especially in relation to the cost of urbanization. And finally, it has also failed due to lack of proper consideration and foresight into possible problems by the government.