New Dam Helps Farmers Shake Off Poverty

A bird’s eye view of the Manwan Hydropower Station, the first of eight hydropower stations on the international Lancang-Mekong River.

Life has become much busier for Cha Shaoxue of Jiangbian (riverside) Village in Fengqing Country, Lincang Prefecture, in South-west China’s Yunnan Province.

A farmer-turned-labour contractor, he now hires several workers and every day finds, negotiates and completes such work projects as building a section of retaining wall for a road or laying paving stones. He uses a cell phone to communicate with his clients and drives a 6,000-yuan (US$723) second-hand jeep to get around.

Before 1999, life was simple and slow for the 40-year-old farmer of Yi ethnic minority.

He grew corn and rice for a living. The main income of his family came from selling chickens and pigs to a market at Xiaowan Township, a small town several kilometers away from his village. He seldom traveled beyond Xiaowan, as there was no bus service between the market town and the country seat of Fengqing.

Some Local farmers make their living by raising vegetables in green houses.

“Xiaowan Hydropower Station has brought about great changes here,” he said.

Relocation project

For Cha and more than 40,000 of his neighbours, the biggest change that has come with the hydroelectric project is their relocation.

Under construction on the international Lancang-Mekong River, which runs through the gorges below Cha’s fields and house, the Xiaowan Hydropower Station will be China’s second largest, with a total installed generating capacity of 4.2 million kilowatts. The largest one is the Three Gorges project on the Yangtze River.

The Xiaowan Hydropower Station is the second of eight planned hydroelectric power stations on the Lancang-Mekong River and it will be the largest water-conservancy project in Yunnan.

The first power station, Manwan, finished in June, 1995, between the Lincang and Simao prefectures, has a total installed generating capacity of 1.25 million kilowatts.

According to a memorandum signed between China and Thailand, power stations on the river will start providing electricity to Thailand in 2013. Electricity generated will also be sent to the southern coastal provinces of China.

If the project is completed on schedule, in 2012, a 292-metre-high dam will span the river, which originates in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and runs 4,880 kilometres through Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam.

About 22.2 billion yuan (US$ 2.7 billion) will be spent on construction, the largest investment of this kind in the province.

Construction of the project formally started this January. As a result, the lofty gorges created by rolling mountains and the brown Lancang-Mekong River between Lincang Prefecture and Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture of Yunnan have become a clamorous construction site.

A newly-completed steel cable bridge spans the roaring stream. Trucks and cars shuttle between the banks of the river. Bulldozers and excavators stir up clouds of dust and flatten stretches of rice paddies that Cha and his neighbouring villagers used to till.

Several cement buildings in the base camp of the project overlook the running water. At a higher slope several hundred metres away, lines of two-storey makeshift buildings surround Jiangbian Village. With groceries, restaurants, food and vegetable stands, barbershop and karaoke bars, they are the village’s new free market.

According to Yang Yafeng, director of the relocation department of the Lancang-Mekong River Hydropower Development Co, the developer of the dam project, 41,243 people in the dam area will have to be relocated.

Among them, about 10,000 people living in Fengqing Country will move to other countries of Lincang Prefecture.

“Most of them farm on slopes of more than 25 degrees,” said Yang. “So their fields have been subject to heavy soil erosion.”

During the relocation project, he said, they will be compensated with fields of less than 25 degrees slope, which accords with the country’s strategy of returning farmland with slopes of more than 25 degrees to woodland.

But before 2005, fewer than 4,000 people will need to leave their homes.

“We plan to invest 3.25 billion yuan (US$ 392 million) in the relocation project, “Yang said, “of which about 1.3 billion yuan (US$157 million) will be used to compensate the 41,000 resettled farmers, about 30,000 (US$ 3,600) per person.”

At present, 704 people of Xiaowan Township who live in or close to the construction site of the project have either given up their fields or will soon move their homes to the nearby resettlement community under construction.

According to Zhao Yulei, head of the township, the resettlement area will be close to the new Xiaowan town, which is under construction on a higher slope, about one or two kilometers from the present town.

More than 20 hectares of sloping land, about half an hour’s walk from the new town, have been reclaimed and are ready to resettle farmers. Once the relocation starts, the local farmers can choose land and/or money as their form of compensation.

Changing life

Early this year, Cha Shaoxue’s family’s 0.3 hectares of rice paddy and 0.6 hectares of dry land were taken over by the construction project.

However, the farmer said that it is “not a big deal,” for he has been engaged in the infrastructure construction for the dam since 1999.

“I want money as compensation,” said Cha Shaoxue. “I don’t want to farm again, because farming doesn’t bring in enough money these days.”

He said that his family of five members, including his mother, wife and two children, had an annual income of about 2,750 yuan (US$ 331) in 1999. Last year the family earned 7,885 yuan (US$ 950).

His wife, working at the free market as a sanitation worker, earns 500 yuan (US$ 60) per month. Even without any special project to do, Cha can easily find odd jobs at the construction site. “We get 20 yuan (US$2.40) per day for such odd jobs,” he said.

With his increased earnings, Cha Shaoxue fitted his house with metal doors and windows, bought a colour television set and a VCD player for his family, and also bought a cell phone for himself.

“The cell phone network has covered the area since 1999,” he said. “Now I have a phone bill of about 200 yuan (US$ 24) each month.”

“To us people living in mountain, the Xiaowan project provides truly great chance to shake off our poverty,” he added.

Zi Caowei, 42, said that his family has got out of poverty, even though, like the Chas, all of the family’s land was taken over.

Since 2000, people from all walks of life have poured into the area. Zi, also a Yi farmer, rents five spare rooms in his house to people who have come in from outside.

Charging 600 yuan (US$ 72) a month and 20 yuan a day (US$ 2.40) for a room, the family of five members, including Zi’s father, wife and two children, earn at least 30,000 yuan (US$ 3,614) per year in rent.

His wife collects leftovers from restaurants at the free market to raise four pigs. “We can sell them to the market in three months,” Zi said.

The family also has a TV set, VCD machine and a telephone. “And I can drink everyday,” Zi said, with a broad grin.

Unlike Cha and Zi Caowei, 43-year-old Zi Zhengli feels he has been unlucky.

The family had 0.33 hectares of rice paddy and more than 1.3 hectares of dry land, he said. The family also had rice-milling and flour-milling machines of its own. “With our rice and flour mills and selling livestock, we earned more than 10,000 yuan (US$ 1,205) a year,” he said.

But today, both the land and house of his family have been taken over for the dam project.

At present, the family of eight members earns a similar income, or even a little higher, by running a grocery in the free market, doing odd jobs at the construction site and delivering building materials with a truck.

Once the resettlement area is completed, Zi Zhengli and his family have to move into the new community, but he is reluctant to move.

The farmer, who looks much older than his age, is especially reluctant to leave his neighbours. “Most of them are either my friends or relatives,” he said. “It’s hard to part with them.”

What is more, “I have got used to farming and don’t like doing other things,” said the farmer. “So I will choose to have both land and money as compensation. The land is for myself and the compensation is for my sons.”

According to the farmer, his two sons are not willing to farm again. “They want to become truck drivers,” he said.

However reluctant Zi Zhengli is, he said he and many other villagers will accept the project anyway, as the whole area will enjoy more electricity than before.

According to Zhao Yulei, the relocation work so far has been going smoothly.

“After all, most families in this area have members engaged in construction of the Xiaowan dam,” he said.

“Our per capita annual income increased from 370 yuan (US$44.60) in 1999 to 801 yuan (US$ 96.50) in 2001. Telephone and roads connect us with the outside world. To most of us, life is getting better. The Xiaowan Hydropower Station is the reason of all these.

Smoke break : Zi Caowei, 42, enjoys a water pipe made from bamboo. He says his family has bade poverty goodbye.

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The article is supported by the IPS-Rockefeller media fellowship programme “Our Mekong: A Vision Amid Globalozation.”