Socialist hydropower governances compared: dams and resettlement as experienced by Dai and Thai societies from the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands

Research on hydropower development has shown that a diversity of social and environmental impacts of dams is distributed unevenly among various state and corporate actors and riparian populations. This article analyses how two neighbouring socialist states, China and Vietnam, govern dam-induced resettlement along their respective sections of the Red River Watershed. Our investigation focuses on resettlement villages created during the construction of the Madushan (China) and Ban Chat (Vietnam) reservoirs and testifies that resettlement policies on both sides of the border serve statist modernization agendas that fail to acknowledge Dai (China) and Thai (Vietnam) ethnic minority livelihoods. While local populations endure the greatest impacts from dam-induced changes in water allocation and the ensuing consequences for land resources, the benefits of hydropower development are first and foremost shared among state-owned and/or state-backed energy companies. These companies reap huge profits from their role as power generators for capitalist production, while also benefiting from state authorities underevaluating resettled communities’ livelihood assets. A comparison of the two cases reveals that despite the border that separates China and Vietnam, and despite both states emphasizing different resettlement discourses, governance of dam-induced resettlement is strikingly similar.