Social Impact Assessment and Public Participation in China资料文件与下载

COMMENTARY 

We were unable to gain free access to this article for MOOC participants. The original article can be read here. For those without institutional access, we summarize the main points below.

This article, "Social Impact Assessment and Public Participation in China: A Case Study of Land Requisition in Guangzhou," by Bo-sin Tang, Siu-wai Wong, and Milton Chi-hong Lau, contrasts China’s development model with the model described in the last reading. The authors describe the emergence of Social Impact Assessment internationally, before contrasting this with the way it is used in China.

As you read, Esteves, Franks, and Vanclay argue that stakeholder deliberation is essential to effective impact assessment. In this article, Tang, Wong, and Lau contend that Western deliberative models have gained little credibility in China, where officials think that relying on expert opinion is the best way to calculate social impacts (60–61). But as the authors note, urban development unavoidably results in conflicting interests and disputed valuations. While experts can suggest the scale and types of impacts to assess, they cannot resolve value-based disputes through the application of technical expertise.

Land acquisition is an arena in which value disputes are often intractable. This can be seen in the different words that parties use to describe the same thing: what developers term “land assembly” is described as “land confiscation” by opposing claimants. These terms reflect conflicting values. Developers and planners view land as having a commodity value, usually determined by the “highest and best use” of that land if it were available on the open market. Peasant farmers, who claim most of the land in China’s urban periphery, tend to see household subsistence, social organization, and cultural mores as the basis for their landholding claims. For farmers, removal from one’s land is also removal from one’s livelihood, and market-based compensation is unfair because it fails to take account of the social goods associated with land claims. Because of these omissions, hasty compensation strategies offering “fair market value” to landowners are often rejected and can trigger unrest.

The article presents a case in Guangzhou’s industrial development zone where public consultation achieved agreement on compensation for resident farmers. Planning officials saw new industrial land as the key to future city prosperity, but knew this would cause displacement of several farming villages. Fearing that public conflicts would block their objective, the officials initiated a public consultation process in an effort to reduce opposition. Participatory methods were used to gain trust, resolve inter-household disagreements, and reduce collective opposition.

The case supports the view that public consultation can help quell conflicts and resolve disputes that arise from new development. However, the municipality’s belief that only one general outcome was appropriate meant that some landowners had to be forced to relocate. So, they achieved compliance, but not agreement. The authors indicate that some social gains went unrealized because coercive tactics   were used to force agreement.

While a number of factors, such as the rise of environmental and social concerns in the increasingly affluent Chinese middle class, provide opportunities for the expanded application of SIAs in China, the authors note some key constraints. These include: insufficient administrative and legal backup, the aforementioned top-down planning ideology focused on compliance rather than consultation, and the common belief in rural areas, derived from traditional Chinese culture, that a benevolent central government should be trusted to deliver community wellbeing.

Reflection questions :

1.   What connection do the authors make between failing to consider alternative development plans and failing to realize the possible social gains from development 

2.   If you were charged with minimizing opposition in a village relocation context, what would be the key principles guiding your assessment and consultation process 

3.   The authors propose that a socially responsible development is one in which no one is made worse off (59). Do you agree? Is this too demanding, or not demanding enough as a decision rule? 

4.   Based on this week’s readings, or your own experience, what other conditions do you consider necessary to achieving mutual gains from social impact assessment? 

READING

Social Impact Assessment and Public Participation: A Case Study of Land Requisition in Guangzhou