Who Resettled?--A Sociological Research On Voluntary Resettlement Projects In The Western Area Of China

In China the voluntary resettlement project was carried out in Three West Area in 1983. Since then the voluntary resettlement projects for poverty reduction have been launched in more than 20 provinces. During past 20 years the resettled population added up to about 2.58 million and the total investment was 10 billion. The voluntary resettlement project has become one of important government interventions on poverty reduction. However, the strategy of area targeting and the inefficiency of trickle-down mechanism had negative effects on the efficient targeting and reasonability of resource and in general the poor group was been kept out of the beneficial group. Whether the key issue lies in the voluntary resettlement project which the government and officials prefer to is worth to exploring. This thesis tried to inquire According to the field work in two cases we can found that the most of resettled households are relative rich and the poor group still stay in original place. The conditions for living and production have not improved. They are still harsh poor.In this research the theory of unintended consequence of middle range theory in sociology was adopted to analyze the phenomenon that the rich benefits from the project while the poor not. The willingness of resettled household and intervention of the government are the two key characters in the voluntary resettlement project. So the theory of social capital and the strategy of economical development will be used to explain the behaviors of household and government and then summarize the causes of unintended consequence.According the cause analysis the paper give some recommendations to avoid the unintended consequence.