VI. Inadequate Compensation and Subsidies

The government can easily make a promise, but it will only win people's trust by backing up its words with money.

—Zhang Qingli, Party secretary of the TAR, March 2007

[County and township officials] give various reasons and people don’t receive the exact amount promised by the government.

—Interviewee from Tingri county, TAR, May 2007

The government claims that its compensation system for evictions and compulsory rehousing in Tibetan areas is more than adequate and that it is fulfilling all of its commitments to communities targeted by these policies. It points to the amount of government funds invested and to the various loans and financial compensation schemes as evidence of the fulfillment of its obligations.[158]

Local authorities stress that resettlement and rehousing make the Tibetan population better off, in part by providing basic amenities like electricity and water. They insist that the new houses in which people are resettled are more modern, better built, better looking, and more adapted to the harsh climate and environment than the original ones, all while still respecting distinctive traits of traditional Tibetan architecture.[159]

The government also maintains that over time rehousing will lead to an improvement in living standards, that clustering housing simplifies access to public goods such as schools and medical facilities, and that Tibetans are satisfied with and grateful for the benefits derived from relocation and rehousing policies.[160]

But the testimonies below raise questions about these assertions. Some interviewees claimed that the initial assessment of their home was not conducted properly, leading to a lower calculation for compensation. Others reported that they had never received the full amount of compensation promised to them. Some told Human Rights Watch that the authorities failed to provide building material promised to them or that they had to pay higher prices for it than they had been told. Virtually all interviewees said they had no opportunities to challenge compensation decisions by local governmental officials.[161]

Compensation Calculations

The compensation and subsidies system for people affected by the New Socialist Villages and Comfortable Housing policies is complex and opaque. It is governed by a large number of regulations, notices, implementation directives, ministry-specific rules and regulations, intra-agency guidelines, and occasional direct policy instruction. Many of these are classified as “internal” (neibu) by the government and are not publicized. Most of the non-internal regulations are only available in Chinese and are not easily available to the public, leaving local power-holders with considerable room and discretion about how to implement them in order to reach the goals assigned to them.

Overall, compensation and subsidies are composed of three components:

1)      Direct government subsidies towards the cost of building the new house;

2)      Entitlements to preferential bank loans, also going towards the cost of building the new house; and

3)      If applicable, additional layers of compensation and subsidies for the loss of property and assets, compulsory reduction of herds and flocks, loss of vegetable patches and greenhouses, and others losses.

Subsidy levels are influenced by factors such as where the new house is built. There are no aggregate statistics about how many residents were allowed to rebuild their houses on the same spot as their former house and how many were instructed to move to a new spot, sometimes a few hundred meters away, sometimes a few kilometers away. In 2007, the TAR governor claimed that only 20% of the households targeted by the Comfortable Housing campaign, about 280,000 people, had to move location, but he offered no evidence or other information to support this claim.[164]

In addition, some households or communities may qualify for subsidies under a variety of rules relating to poverty alleviation funds. Some of these subsidies are in-kind, such as grain, and are provided over a number of years. Other subsidies are governed by their own procedures or the program under which the household falls: “poverty alleviation” (fupin), “border areas revitalization” (xingbian fumin), or “environmental migration” (shengtai yimin).

Compensation and Subsidies for Relocation and Housing [165]

The formula for calculating compensation and subsidies is not based on the value of the original house that the household must abandon or demolish. The amount given is calculated primarily to ensure that Tibetan households will have the financial capacity to build, or to have built, the new houses to government standards. The cost of building houses to government standards was set by the government at between 40,000 to 60,000 Yuan (about $US6,000 to 9,500).[166] Through this formula, an unknown number of rural Tibetans who may have invested considerable sums in improving their homes were given considerably less than the value of that property when obliged to rebuild.

Local officials are largely responsible for implementing compensation and subsidies. They must assess which households or communities in their jurisdictions are eligible for which subsidies and grants and develop solutions to enable households to bear the financial cost of reconstruction.

To determine the level of compensation and subsidies to which each household is entitled, local authorities survey all households under their jurisdiction. Local officials collect data such as how many individuals live in the household and the size, age, and construction materials of the house. The assessment also involves determining whether the house was built on state or collective land, whether there are any assets (such as a barn or a workshop attached to the original house), average yearly income and earning capacity of the household, its bank savings, and other financial assets. The authorities then rank households in different categories (poor, medium, well-off) that correspond to different set levels of subsidies. The amount per household varies according to location, but generally ranges from 10,000 to 25,000 yuan. This direct subsidy is only payable once the new house is finished and local officials have certified it as meeting required specifications.

Many interviewees reported that local officials often withheld part of the compensation on the grounds that the new house did not exactly meet the government standards. Jampa Tsering from Drayab county, Chamdo (Ch. Changdu), TAR, told Human Rights Watch that:

They said that they would give 20,000 Yuan for the best houses, 15,000 Yuan for average ones and 10,000 for poor ones, but when officials came to inspect the completed houses they say that the windows had not been done properly or that money had to be deducted for the wood and stone material used for the construction.[167]

In one village near Shigatse, residents claimed they got a fraction of the promised compensation:

In the end they did not give the total amount promised for compensation, only about a quarter. So households who have built new houses are now stuck with loans and they wonder how they will repay them.[168]

A respondent from Tingri county, TAR, said that although the government originally told each household that they “would be given 16,000 Yuan [about US$2,500),”[169] the full amount did not materialize:

Those households who have completed new houses received a maximum of 6,000 Yuan only. And that too was given only after county and township officials inspected the new house to see if it was built according to official specifications. They give various reasons and people don’t receive the exact amount promised by the government.[170]

Other interviewees alleged that no compensation was paid at all:

Initially, the government said that they would help but after the nomads had spent their money building the new houses in fact the government did not give a single Yuan.[171]

Residents lack effective avenues to challenge the withholding of compensation funds. One respondent told Human Rights Watch that local officials stonewalled most demands:

There is a place [the local government office] where people can go to complain [about lack of compensation] but they tell you that the house has not been built according to official specifications and therefore that the government won’t give the full amount. What’s more, they claim that the government has provided the opportunity for people to live a comfortable and hygienic life so we should be grateful…[172]

Allegations of Corruption

Interviewees told Human Rights Watch that the way compensation and subsidy programs are implemented gives local officials extensive opportunities to embezzle funds. Interviewees from many areas said that individual households never actually received promised state subsidies, compensation, or loans. Instead, village officials recorded these as credit against other costs of the rehousing operations, such as building materials, with no transparency in the process.

One man told Human Rights Watch that local officials told residents that the government funds allocated for the rehousing program had “already been used”:

The way [the government subsidy system] works is that the regional government of the TAR transfers [the funds] to the counties, and then the counties and townships pass it to the households. People say that government officials are stealing some money between the different stages. Some households [in my area] claimed their compensation funds, arguing that they have finished building their new house and have large loans to repay. But the local leaders didn’t give them any; instead they pretended that the money had already been used.[173]

In a case illustrating the far-reaching power of local officials, Tseten Norgye, from Rinpung county, Shigatse, TAR, said officials in his community had taken advantage of the drive to build New Socialist villages by confiscating land to build their own houses:

The county leader informed the household that [those who needed the land] were government officials and leaders, and that the government would compensate [the household]. They couldn’t say anything against it. People always have to obey orders from government officials and life is difficult. They gave a small amount of cash to whomever the land belonged to.[174]

The widespread suspicion that local officials embezzle some of the compensation funds seems reflected by occasional higher-level government communications regarding “misallocation of funds.” In Naqu (Tib. Nagchu), for instance, a 2007 government notice urged officials to crack down on the practices of “making fake reports to fraudulently obtain preferential loans” and “switching the funds to other projects.” The notice went on to say:

Township and village committees must strengthen the management of the funds allocated for loans. [F]alse reporting or the misuse of financial subversions will lead to the suppression of all loans and subsidies for the offending township.[175]

In mid-2012, one Chinese scholar who had carried out research on the Tibetan plateau told Human Rights Watch that in his view embezzlement of government subsidies was a significant problem:

Although many scholars have warned in internal reports the central government about the significant problems associated with relocation, policies from Beijing haven’t really changed. One of the key reasons is that there are powerful interest groups in the government who have an interest in keeping the flow of the massive subsidies associated with the relocation programs coming. There is a lot of ‘leakage’ of funds, especially between the provincial and the county level.[176]