ABSTRACT
The Yichang branch of the Three Gorges Economic Development Office once planned to move the entire village to the Wujia port area in Yichang. The issue of involuntary resettlement is not simply a matter of finding land and providing financial compensation for relocatees. It is a complex process in which people must adapt to new financial, social, environmental, and employment-related situations. With this in mind, in 1992 my research team visited the Three Gorges area and conducted fieldwork in three villages: Dongrangkou, located on the northern bank of the Yangtze across from the city of Badong in Hubei Province; Badong has been a center of munitions production since the 1960s when China moved its defense industries into the interior in anticipation of foreign invasion. Recently, it received substantial investments from the central government to support resettlement and reconstruction of the town above the proposed water line of the reservoir.
