Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
ject is emerging while the state is gradually shedding its accountability and moral respons-
ibilities for taking care of its people” (Zhang 2010:215-216).
Marketization has undoubtedly proven to be an efficient way to build electrical capacity
and to transmit the power to where commercial and residential demand is highest. After all,
the market is ideally suited to perform the amoral tasks of matching supply with demand,
setting prices, and distributing commodities. In
The Great Transformation
, Karl Polanyi
([1944] 1957) observes that the market sphere has consistently ballooned since the advent
of the Industrial Revolution, in the process becoming disembedded from society, less and
less accountable to the broader social good, and ultimately unconcerned with questions of
morality. But if Chinese decision makers and citizens are also concerned about the collect-
ive social good—about the just treatment of people among the most vulnerable in the coun-
try, who are asked to bear some significant and lasting costs—then there is clearly a role
for the state to play. There is a case to be made that only the state, equipped with political
power and ideally accountable to its citizens, can mitigate the “perils inherent in a self-reg-
ulating market system” (Polanyi [1944] 1957:76).
MOVING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION
Given the vast sums of money involved in constructing and operating dams, it is easy to
become cynical about government agencies' andhydropower corporations' rhetorical com-
mitment to addressing the needs of displaced people. Indeed, as the detailed case stud-
ies of the Nu and Lancang basins illustrate, dam-induced displacement can cause enorm-
ous suffering. Such cynicism, in short, is well founded. But it is also true that China's
resettlement-compensation policies are gradually improving, due largely to the tireless ef-
forts of Chinese social scientists, journalists, and social activists who have documented the
disastrous consequences of displacement and advocated for policies that better address mi-
grants' concerns and better equip them to secure their future livelihoods (see, for example,
Guo 2008). The question of precisely how compensation policies affect villagers' lives and
livelihoods is ultimately an empirical one.
The structure of law and policy governing population resettlement in China is a complex
andevolvingmosaic. Atitscenter istheConstitution andtheAdministrative LawofChina;
other pieces of the mosaic are formed by laws (
fa lü
) passed by the National People's Con-
gress as well as by administrative regulations (
xingzheng fagui
) passed by state agencies
such as the State Council and its various divisions and ministries. There are also local or
regional regulations (
difangxing fagui
) issued by local people's congresses or other admin-
istrative bodies, which are limited to the scope of their jurisdiction.
From the founding of the PRC in 1949 until the 1990s, an era that witnessed the con-
struction of tens of thousands of dams and the displacement of an estimated 10 million
