Dams, Migration and Authoritarianism in China

Sabrina Habich

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317388753
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Past studies on the Chinese state point towards the inherent adaptability, effectiveness and overall stability of authoritarian rule in China. The key question addressed here is how this adaptive capacity plays out at the local level in China, clarifying the extent to which local state actors are able to shape local processes of policy implementation.

This book studies the evolution of dam-induced resettlement policy in China, based on extensive fieldwork conducted in Yunnan province. It shows that local governments at the lowest administrative levels are caught in a double bind, facing strong top-down pressures in the important policy field of hydropower development, while simultaneously having to handle growing social pressure from local communities affected by resettlement policies. In doing so, the book questions the widespread assumption that the observed longevity and resilience of China's authoritarian regime is to a large extent due to the high degree of flexibility that has been granted to local governments in the course of the reform period. The research extends beyond previous analyses of policy implementation by focusing on the state, on society and the ways in which they interact, as well as by examining what happens when policy implementation is interrupted.

Analysing the application of resettlement policies in contemporary China, with a focus on the multiple constraints that Chinese local states face, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Political Science, Chinese Studies and Sociology.

1
Introduction

Authoritarianism, policy, and dams

The longevity and continued stability of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has spurred a lively debate about the necessary ingredients for authoritarian regimes to be resilient. What kind of foundation does a Communist single-party system need in order to successfully adapt to changing social, political, and economic circumstances? And how much adaptability is possible without causing damage to the main pillars upon which the authoritarian state system has been built? In the early 1990s, China’s one-party system not only survived the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union but remained stable to the extent that impressive social and economic development was achieved. Rather than being inherently static, the Chinese political system features a dynamic adaptive capacity. Although some parts of the system are continuously evolving and adjusting to the changing national and international environment, new conflicts along ethnic, economic, and social lines have emerged, which bring into question the continued resilience of the Chinese political system.

The possibilities for political renewal on the one hand and the threat of Communist decay on the other have prompted a lively debate among scholars focusing on China’s political development. In the special issue, China’s Changing of the Guard, which was published by the Journal of Democracy in 2003, Nathan introduced the term “authoritarian resilience” into the discussion on China’s political evolution. In general, two main positions are found with regard to the future of Communist rule in China. According to one school of thought, the power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is expected to decline (e.g., C. Li, 2012; Pei, 2006), but advocates of the other position argue that a Leninist system is resurfacing in China (e.g., D. L. Yang, 2004). However, the majority of studies have come to an ambiguous conclusion, placing an emphasis on the “atrophy and adaptation” of the CCP (Shambaugh, 2008).

From a macro-level perspective, the Chinese party-state has so far proven to be sufficiently responsive to societal demands so as to stay in power. Continuous institutional change and political performance represent what has been referred to as adaptive authoritarianism – a concept first applied by Samuel P. Huntington (1970) to describe the process of change that revolutionary one-party systems undergo, namely, transformation, consolidation, and finally adaptation. The latter refers to institutional adaptation and a redefinition of the role of the party, which the CCP has arguably been doing in various fields including ideology (see, e.g., Shambaugh, 2008: Chapter 6; Holbig, 2013); propaganda (see, e.g., Brady, 2012); organization (see, e.g., Gore, 2011; Shambaugh, 2008: Chapter 7); and administration (see, e.g., Christensen, Dong, & Painter, 2008). ¹

In 2011, Sebastian Heilmann and Elizabeth Perry made an important contribution to the discussion on how and why the CCP is still in power today. In the book entitled Mao’s Invisible Hand, the two authors expressed concern with regard to the ability of the Chinese political system to cope with serious crises, such as the Asian financial crisis, the SARS epidemic, and the global financial crisis. They provided an analysis to explain how and why the system continues to survive and, in particular, described the mechanisms that underpin its survival. At the core of their explanation lies the ability of Chinese decision-makers to flexibly adapt policies in an uncertain national and international policy environment.

Dam-induced resettlement is one of the policy fields that demonstrate the adaptive capacity of the political center in Beijing. This book studies the consequences of authoritarian adaptability at the central level for local policy implementation. It will be shown that, first, an analysis of authoritarian adaptability has to differentiate between administrative levels and should not assume the existence of adaptive capacity on all levels. In the present case, while the center has proven its ability to adapt, the local level – while attempting to creatively implement central policies – has been tied to hierarchical structures and public demands that taken together limit the local state’s ability to adapt flexibly. Xi Jinping’s twin campaigns of anticorruption and recentralization of state control will reinforce this situation and mostly likely enhance inflexibility in other policy fields.

China’s authorities claim that since 1949, more than 10 million people have been resettled in the course of water conservancy and hydroelectric projects; independent observers, however, estimate the number to be much higher (Hegge-lund, 2004: 62). For the largest hydropower project in the world alone, the Three Gorges Dam, approximately 1.24 million inhabitants of Chongqing Municipality and Hubei Province were displaced (Xinhua, 2011). Studies on resettlement processes in China indicate that involuntary resettlement all too frequently causes chronic impoverishment among the displaced people, which poses a serious threat to social stability in areas with a high concentration of resettled people (Jun, 2000). For several decades now, in order to safeguard the country’s hydropower development strategy as well as social stability, the State Council and China’s resettlement bureaucracy have been actively designing a regulatory framework for resettlement.

The construction of the Three Gorges Dam since the 1980s, in particular, has drawn the attention of scholars and bureaucrats to the problem of resettlement induced by large hydropower projects spurring the development of new resettlement regulations in recent years. These new regulations are in line with the new focus of the central government on social development, which has found expression in development paradigms that have surfaced during the Hu-Wen era such as the concept of building a ‘‘socialist harmonious society” and the ‘‘scientific development concept” (see, e.g., Holbig, 2007, 2013). These new concepts indicate a shift that is taking place – at least at the central government level – away from the traditional development paradigm with its mere focus on economic growth towards a more balanced approach to social and economic development (Lam, 2006). Recent policy decisions, including the “Decision on Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening Reforms” adopted at the Third Plenary Session of the Eighteenth CPC Central Committee in November 2013, indicate a continued focus on social development under the new administration led by Xi Jinping. The introduction of more socially oriented resettlement policies after 2006 has to be regarded in this context.

This new regulatory framework for resettlement is one example of the institutionalization of the CCP regime, in particular of “the differentiation and functional specialization of institutions within the regime,” regarded as one major element of authoritarian resilience in China (Nathan, 2003: 7). However, implementation of these new policies does not occur at the political center in Beijing. Instead, as the most recent central-level resettlement regulations state, governments at the county level are responsible for organizing resettlement work in their jurisdiction while the provincial level is responsible for overall guidance and monitoring of policy implementation (State Council, 2006a). This is in line with the principle of “adjusting measures to local conditions” (yindi zhiyi) that Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) historian Zhao Ye had already brought up in his History of the Southern States Wu and Yue and which remains an important concept in the Chinese policy process. Therefore, the consequences of this new regulatory framework are primarily observed at the local level. In the words of Shambaugh (2008: 104), the changes that have been taking place in the realm of resettlement policy have “triggered certain consequences (some expected, others unexpected) that in turn cause readjustments and further reforms.” These unexpected consequences are currently being dealt with primarily by local governments who have to resettle communities under these new conditions brought about by said reforms.

A common theme in much of the literature on the local state is its flexibility and strategic agency. No matter if these two characteristics lead to “irresponsive image-building” (Cai, 2003), “factionalism” (Hillman, 2014), or “gangster capitalism” (Le Mons Walker, 2006), or whether they result in “effective policy implementation” (Ahlers, 2014; Ahlers & Schubert, 2015) and local economic development (e.g., Edin 2000; Oi 1992, 1995), scholars of the Chinese local state agree that local cadres in contemporary China are relatively autonomous in the way they implement central-level policies.

It goes without saying that a thorough understanding of the consequences of local state flexibility is of central importance to the study of contemporary China. Nevertheless, in order to discern different varieties of policy implementation that undoubtedly exist in a vast country like China, it is equally important to look for sources and results of inflexibility in the policy process. Since the beginning of the reform process in 1978, the Chinese state has undergone several phases of decentralization and recentralization that have, through different means, strengthened or loosened the knot between the political center in Beijing and its localities across the country (Burns, 1994; Landry, 2008; D. Yang, 1996). Recent reform initiatives announced by the Xi-Li administration indicate another round of recentralization that is likely to further reduce local state flexibility. ²

This book studies the evolution of dam-induced resettlement policy in China and shows how bureaucratic structures, as well as the underlying distribution of power together with the introduction of more socially oriented resettlement policies, limit local state agency and produce new forms of state-society relations at the grassroots level. The state is no longer dominating society; instead, the empowerment of migrant communities brought about by the introduction of new resettlement regulations contributes to a more equal relationship that, together with the hierarchical nature of the resettlement bureaucracy, limit local state flexibility. Although this study only analyzes one policy field, it is to be expected that recent attempts of institutional recentralization and increased party dominance by the new leadership under President Xi Jinping will produce similar situations in policy fields other than dam-induced resettlement.

Bureaucracy and resettlement

The key question of this book is how adaptive authoritarianism works at the local level in China. This question is analyzed by looking at the ways in which policy changes at the central government level in the field of dam-induced resettlement impact on the ongoing processes of local policy implementation. This central line of inquiry leads to a series of questions: First, what is the structure of the Chinese resettlement bureaucracy, and what types of actors are involved in policymaking and implementation? Second, how have the resettlement regulations changed in the course of “reform and opening up,” and how feasible is the idea of implementing them within the current structure of the Chinese resettlement bureaucracy? How do the current institutional arrangements foster or obstruct local policy implementation? Third, what do these policy changes and local cadres’ subsequent attempts to implement them mean for state-society relations on the ground? Fourth, how is the local state adapting to newly introduced central-level policies that require increasing attention to be paid to social rather than economic aspects of development? And, finally, what does this analysis reveal about processes of adaptation at the national level as well as its potentials and limits?

It might be assumed that central-level policy changes introducing higher compensation standards, improved consultation with affected communities, and, in general, more “human-oriented” resettlement processes would be highly skewed by local cadres during the implementation processes. According to O’Brien and Li (1999), the incentive structure created by the central government caused local cadres to implement policies that had hard and quantifiable targets rather than soft and nonquantifiable policy targets. Although resettlement regulations stipulated the amount of compensation to be paid to migrants as well as the way that resettlement was to be planned and carried out, they did not stipulate any quantifiable policy target. Instead, hard targets specifying the number of migrants to be resettled within a specified timeframe were set according to resettlement plans designed for each hydropower station. It seems likely then that local governments, although eager to fulfill the hard targets set by resettlement plans, are more flexible and selective when it comes to attaining the loftier goals stipulated by the new resettlement regulations introduced by the State Council in 2006.

On the other hand, the resettlement bureaucracy functions as an appendix to the influential hydropower bureaucracy in China, with resettlement policymaking and implementation being driven by the need to construct hydropower stations and implement China’s ambitious plans for reducing carbon emissions and ensuring energy security. Furthermore, the construction of hydropower stations is highly favored by local governments who are eager to attract investment. As a result, local cadres employed in the resettlement bureaucracy are not only driven by the general incentive to fulfill policy targets set by their superiors but are crucial actors within the hydropower strategy that is considered highly important by the central government as well as by each of the government departments responsible for economic planning at the local level. The pressure to complete relocation plans in a timely fashion is therefore even higher and has the potential to undermine the “human-oriented goals” set out in the new regulations.

Moreover, during the entire resettlement process, local governments retained a firm grip on resettlement communities in order to ensure the smooth attainment of planned targets and to prevent any instances of social instability. As Mertha (2008) showed, civil society is sometimes able to prevent the construction of dams, but in order to ensure the smooth progression of construction after the government has decided on a project, local communities are generally given little opportunity to hinder the implementation of resettlement plans or to influence policy implementation in any other way. It is therefore to be expected that, due to the increasing economic and political clout of energy companies, local governments are pressured to implement construction projects in such a way that the authoritarian nature of political rule is enhanced rather than weakened. The following overview of the main arguments presented in this book takes these observations further.

This book argues that compared with policy initiatives, such as “Building a New Socialist Countryside,” which, despite being centrally funded, are designed to foster local initiatives in the sphere of rural development. China’s hydropower policy is a centrally mandated development strategy aimed at increasing clean energy provision. The hydropower bureaucracy is composed of powerful political actors, such as the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the Ministry of Water Resources (MWR), which are hugely in favor of large dams and work closely with equally powerful energy companies, which are increasingly being guided by market principles (Hensengerth, 2010; Mertha, 2008). At the same time, as will be shown in subsequent chapters, the central government has introduced a series of measures to improve dam-induced resettlement, one result of which has been to empower migrant communities.

Thus, this book studies a policy field in which local state agents are exposed to particularly strict policy demands from their superiors (including energy companies) and their local constituencies. When it comes to policymaking at the central level, the Chinese leadership and, in particular, the Ministry of Water Resources, have gradually, but continuously, improved and flexibly adapted resettlement policy in response to the constantly changing national and international environment for hydropower development, energy security, and social and economic development. The most significant improvements deriving from central-level policy change are the 2006 regulations and the subsequent accompanying measures and notifications, which required lower levels of government to pay more attention to resettlement issues and migrant communities.

The result of these improvements has been a much more regularized process of dam-induced resettlement. Nevertheless, at the current time, despite these changes, the organizational field of dam-induced resettlement in China is dominated by government agencies and industry representatives that are in favor of the construction of large dams rather than by departments that are genuinely interested in the protection of the dam migrants. In contrast to the organizational field of environmental protection, there is a lack of any independent ministry that is responsible only for resettlement. Thus, while the need to construct dams (as stated by the NDRC) has led the government to pay increased attention to resettlement in order to ensure the smooth running of the construction processes and to prevent social unrest, when it comes to deciding whether a controversial dam should be built or not, the decision will very likely be in line with the wishes of the project developers.

At the provincial level, the relevant government departments design resettlement policies for their jurisdictions based on the broad parameters provided by central policies and local circumstances, such as levels of social and economic development and the availability of land. In addition to these policies, provincial-level government departments, design institutes, and hydropower companies jointly formulate resettlement plans for each large hydropower station built within the province. These resettlement plans are again based on central and provincial-level policies and on the local circumstances of the region that is affected by the resettlement needed for the respective hydropower plant. Provincial governments, therefore, retain a certain degree of flexibility when it comes to formulating reset-tlement policies and plans. At the same time, they are embedded in the hierarchical government administration, which tends to limit this flexibility to some extent. The same applies as we move down to the prefectural level at which flexibility in terms of policymaking is further reduced and the impact of the hierarchical administration is enhanced.

Due to the fact that resettlement plans for large dams are fixed at the provincial level, the lower one moves within the administration, the less influence government actors tend to have on policy change and on negotiations with hydropower companies. The latter have the bureaucratic rank of vice-ministerial units (fubuji) and are therefore politically powerful actors. While being increasingly exposed to market principles, state-owned energy companies are largely insulated from those actors most impacted by their business operations – namely, county and township governments and resettlement communities. Instead, energy companies only negotiate with representatives of the central and provincial governments that promise to provide appropriate investment environments. The efficient ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of maps
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: authoritarianism, policy, and dams
• 2 Fragmented mediation and the local state
• 3 Dam resettlement policy in China
• 4 Hydropower development, resettlement, and the Nuozhadu Dam
• 5 One dam, many policies: the resettlement experience of Green Mountain village
• 6 One dam, many policies: the resettlement experience of South Stream village
• 7 Conclusion: policy, power, and mediation
• Appendix: research methods
• Bibliography
• Index