Power to the People

By Matthew Forney/Yunnan Province

They gathered by a grave tucked into fields of yellow rape flowers high in the Himalayan foothills. There, a dozen-odd guardians of China's last free-flowing rivers unveiled a memorial to a fallen comrade, an activist who had died of a heart attack in January. But their mission had another motive. Following the ceremony, they traveled into remote regions of Yunnan province to gauge opposition to a spate of new dam projects and offer assistance to vulnerable peasants trying to stop them from being built. This wasn't a secret trip. Plainclothes police videotaped everything. Undeterred, the outsiders met with peasants in the prosperous village of Chezhou and found many unwilling to sacrifice their homes to the waters behind a proposed dam. "We eat fish, chicken and pork," an old woman told them, indicating her good fortune. "We don't want to move."

If the activists succeed, they might not have to. The visitors at the graveside included leaders of Beijing environmental groups, reporters from national newspapers and a film crew. Together they make up a loose network opposed to what they consider the devastation of natural resources in a part of the country where snowmelt from the Himalayas irrigates rivers throughout China and Southeast Asia. Already the network has helped delay approval of two impoundments on the upper Yangtze and Salween rivers. Yet in taking on state-run companies and political interests, the environmentalists face daunting odds. Says activist Xue Ye of the Beijing-based Friends of Nature: "We are weak, but we have a chance."

Since the massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989, many have seen China's government as nothing but repressive. But groups like these environmentalists have become drivers of social and political change. They don't directly challenge the Communist Party's power but instead focus on issues like AIDS education, legal reform and, above all, environmental protection--endeavors the government professes to support. What unifies the new generation is a commitment to individual rights. The cover of the influential Beijing magazine Economics last year called the anti-dam movement a "New Social Power in China." "They're promoting the rights of ordinary people," says Elizabeth Economy of the New York--based Council on Foreign Relations, author of The River Runs Black, about China's environment. "Although it's dangerous for them to say so, that means political reform."

Until recently, Beijing saw those affected by dams as little more than obstacles to a bigger goal--powering the world's most eye-popping economy. Beijing's planners want hydropower to help ease their reliance on imported oil. Especially enticing is a swath of Yunnan province where three of Asia's great rivers--the Salween, Mekong and Yangtze--descend through valleys that account for nearly a quarter of China's hydropower potential. Developers have proposed 27 dams on those three rivers.

The mere presence of environmentalists marks a sea change. When Beijing approved the massive Three Gorges Dam in 1992, public opposition was nearly impossible. The $24 billion hydropower station at the center of the project, now under construction, will turn the middle of the Yangtze into a lake half the length of California and force 1.5 million people to relocate. Since the dam was conceived as a monument to Communist Party power, opponents were branded as dissidents. Reforms have changed that. "The government sees activist groups as less of a threat now," says Fu Tao, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "With China calling for an environmentally friendly Olympics in 2008, it's even promised to give them a voice."

Activists had virtually no voice until the 1990s, when Beijing allowed nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to register in large numbers. Today China has 280,000 NGOs, ranging from Ping-Pong clubs to cancer-survivor groups to economic think tanks. Consider them potential interest groups--what social scientists call a budding "civil society"--that will demand a say in government policy. The most active by far are environmentalists. They notched their first triumph in 1998 by blocking a logging scheme in Yunnan province that would have imperiled the rare golden monkey. Today they have graduated to representing people.

Yu Xiaogang, 53, the founder of Green Watershed, realized that the millions of villagers affected by China's 80,000 dams are a powerful weapon. Tens of thousands facing relocation in Sichuan province rioted last October over compensation for their paddy lands along the Dadu River. They formed a "dare-to-die brigade" that held a local official hostage until Beijing dispatched paramilitary police to the area. At least two smaller demonstrations followed in neighboring provinces. Since the media are barred from reporting on trouble at dam sites, peasants remain ignorant of resettlement problems elsewhere. "If people know what's happened at other dams, they can better engage their own governments peacefully," Yu says.

Last summer Yu chartered a bus and drove peasants from a proposed dam area along the upper Salween to visit a 10-year-old dam a few hours away. The government had celebrated the Manwan Dam as a model of development for its cheap electricity and successful relocation of 3,500 people. The visitors saw something different: peasant women picking through the hydropower station's garbage dump for plastic bottles to recycle for pennies. Sobbing, the women explained that they had not found jobs after losing their land. The scene was captured in an underground documentary that environmentalists have passed hand to hand. It concludes with the visitors returning home to warn their families not to believe claims that relocations will mean a good life.

Yu has even taken a page from civil rights struggles elsewhere by promoting a living symbol for the anti-dam movement. Ge Quanxiao, a farmer from the Jinsha River area, stands to lose his home to a planned dam. Yu arranged elocution lessons for Ge and taught him to protect himself by invoking political slogans introduced by China's leader, Hu Jintao. He brought Ge to Beijing to address a United Nations Development Program conference on dams and plead for villagers' right to review settlement plans. Most of all, Yu armed Ge with information to take back to his fellow villagers. "We've survived wars and we've survived earthquakes," Ge tells them. "I don't know if we'll survive dams."

Thanks to such pressure, Beijing has at least started to plan more carefully. Wang Yongchen, a radio journalist who runs the China Rivers Network, an umbrella organization for anti-dam groups, meets frequently with officials at the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) to argue that mandatory environmental impact assessments are often inadequate. SEPA agreed and issued desist orders in January to 30 construction projects. Although construction has restarted on all but four, Wang realized that "we can work with the government."

Yet such incremental successes cause little celebration in remote villages. After the peasants returned home from the Manwan Dam, police called a meeting. "They told us we'll bear responsibility if anybody talks about what was seen," says a villager. "Now we know the real situation, but there's nothing we can do." A few miles upstream, workers for the China Huadian Corp. are drilling 500-ft.-deep holes as part of the proposed dam's geological test. The government has not divulged its plans. And the party has ordered newspapers to stop reporting on debates over dam construction. But opposition to dams has become the emblem of activism in China--for now. The movement remains vulnerable, and the government could quickly view it as a threat. "A few extreme people could have the whole movement considered anti--Communist Party, which it is not," says Yu Xiaogang. "But if we can keep discipline, we will be strong." There is a lot more than dams at stake.