The Price of Progress in Việt Nam Comes at the Expense of Local Communities

Building an international airport requires more than runways, terminals, and control towers. Before any of that can be built, the geography of the site must change. In Gia Bình, Bắc Ninh Province, this means transforming thousands of hectares of  countryside into a new piece of infrastructure that is expected to become one of the region’s strategic hubs.

The Gia Bình International Airport project covers around 1,960 hectares and involves the communes of Gia Bình, Lương Tài, Nhân Thắng, and Lâm Thao. According to official planning, the airport will handle around 30 million passengers a year by 2030, rising to 50 million by 2050. The planned area includes land for civilian airport facilities, shared operational areas, and security infrastructure.

For the Vietnamese authorities, Gia Bình represents a major infrastructure project intended to strengthen regional connectivity, support economic growth, and create new opportunities for Bắc Ninh and the wider Hà Nội area. The airport is also linked to preparations for the 2027 APEC summit, a factor that has contributed to accelerating the construction of some facilities and the clearance of land.

But every new infrastructure project also requires removing existing space. Before a runway can be built, something else has to be removed to make way for it.

In Gia Bình, that territory includes agricultural fields, homes, cemeteries, schools, and parts of existing settlements. The government has introduced special compensation and resettlement measures, including the possibility for some families affected by land recovery to receive additional residential plots beyond in the new resettlement area.

The question, therefore, is not simply how much land is being recovered or how much money is being paid to land users. It is what happens to a community when its territory is transformed to accommodate a vision of development much larger than itself.

The Land Before the Airport

The land recovery is not simply a private transaction between buyers and sellers: the clearance of the areas required for the project is being carried out through state procedures governing land recovery, compensation, and resettlement.

The scale of the operation makes its size clear. In November 2025, authorities reported that more than 1,900 hectares out of approximately 1,885 hectares then considered necessary for the land-clearance phase had already been temporarily handed over, with more than 2 trillion đồng (approximately $77 million) paid to more than 4,000 families. 

By May 2026, the Cục Hàng không Việt Nam (Việt Nam Aviation Bureau) reported that more than 3.1 trillion đồng had been paid to 6,760 families for 1,292 hectares out of the 1,793 hectares planned for that phase.

By September 2026, the process had advanced further. According to Bắc Ninh’s Land Fund Development Centre, more than 1,800 hectares of land had been cleared for the project, representing over 94.2% of the planned area of more than 1,900 hectares. Of the cleared land, 1,256 hectares were agricultural land, 53.4 hectares were residential land, and more than 531 hectares fell into other categories.

Behind these percentages, however, are different people and different forms of property.

Agricultural land does not necessarily have the same economic and social meaning as a home. A house is not simply a structure that can be demolished and rebuilt. A cemetery is not just a space that can be cleared away. And a school is not simply a public building that can be replaced by another one.

The July dossier by the Việt Nam Human Rights Documentation Initiative (VNHRDI) argues that land loss should be understood as a broader process capable of simultaneously changing housing, livelihoods, family relationships, community life, cultural and religious practices, and social networks.

Agricultural Land is Worth More Than its Compensation

One of the most sensitive issues is, naturally, the price.

In May 2026, authorities in Bắc Ninh reported that compensation plans had been approved for more than 2,400 families in the Lương Tài area, covering approximately 319.5 hectares and a total value of around 1.8 trillion đồng. 

The same official report nevertheless acknowledged difficulties: some residents disagreed because of the gap between compensation values and actual market prices, while questions remained over the origins of some land and the valuation of assets located on the affected properties.

This is not a secondary issue. The valuation of land determines not only how much money a family receives but also its ability to rebuild its life after relocation.

The authorities have attempted to address the problem through specific measures. In March 2026, Decision No. 19/2026/QĐ-UBND allowed some families to receive, in addition to a resettlement plot, up to one, two, or three additional residential plots depending on the amount of land recovered from them.

These measures aim to make relocation more economically and socially sustainable. But they also reveal how difficult it is to translate agricultural land, a house, or an entire village into a monetary or real estate equivalent.

The problem also emerges from the administrative documentation itself. The authorities have had to continue verifying the origins of some land, particularly in cases involving land allocated in the past without procedures that would be required today, public agricultural land, or areas used under contracts that have since expired. 

The collection, review, and inventory of documents related to approximately 447 hectares of agricultural land (lands leased without due authorization, expired contracts) is currently underway.

But this issue is not unique to Gia Bình. In September 2026, Luật Khoa reported that Hanoi had adopted a procedure allowing the authorities, in certain cases, to recover land before permanent resettlement facilities had been completed, provided that a compensation and resettlement plan had been approved and temporary accommodation or funding for it had been arranged.

Land, in other words, is not simply a surface on which something can be built. It is also a combination of rights, documents, memories, and economic activities that must be reduced to an administrative value before they can be transferred.

The Population Moves First, the New Home Comes Later

The problem becomes even more apparent when moving from compensation to resettlement.

In July, the Bắc Ninh provincial government reported that almost 1,700 families, representing around 6,800 people, had already been relocated and had handed over the areas required for construction of the airport. 

At the same time, however, the more than 340-hectare resettlement project was still being completed. By June, some relocated families were living temporarily in former district offices or with relatives, while residents were calling for the resettlement site’s infrastructure to be completed so they could settle permanently.

The situation illustrates one of the most concrete contradictions of major infrastructure projects: an airport has to follow a construction timetable, while the creation of new communities can proceed according to a different schedule.

From above, relocation is an administrative sequence: land recovery, compensation, resettlement, and construction.

For those who must leave their homes, however, it means a period when the old place no longer exists and the new one is not yet fully available.

The provincial government had initially expected that contractors would complete the infrastructure of the new resettlement areas by July. But when July arrived, the province had to urge contractors to speed up their work.

The VHRDI dossier cited above describes precisely this sequence as a transformation capable of disrupting family and community networks and changing the everyday conditions of relocated residents.

Progress Needs Consent

The Vietnamese authorities appear to be aware that the issue is not merely technical.

In March, Bắc Ninh Province established five working groups tasked with informing and “mobilizing” residents in relation to land recovery, compensation, and resettlement. The groups went to villages affected by the project.

In April, provincial police also prepared a specific plan to ensure security during land recovery, resettlement, and site-clearance operations. The plan was coordinated with the Ministry of Public Security.

From the state’s perspective, these are administrative tools intended to ensure that a project of exceptional scale can proceed without disruption. But the simultaneous involvement of local authorities, working groups, and security agencies also illustrates the extent to which territorial transformation has become a state priority.

A September dossier on the human rights situation in Gia Bình adds another element. 

According to VHRDI documentation, since March 2026, authorities had questioned, warned, or sanctioned dozens of people over online activities relating to the project. The authorities reported that 37 people had been involved in administrative or police proceedings, and they imposed four fines totaling 26.25 million đồng.

One of the cases concerns Nguyễn Văn Quỳnh, a resident of Bắc Ninh Province, who was charged under Article 331 of the Vietnamese Penal Code with abusing democratic freedoms through content published or shared online. 

According to police, some of the content in Quỳnh’s case concerned the international airport project. The authorities have not, however, made all of the material in question public or provided a complete public account of the evidence.

This case alone does not establish the broader relationship between local opposition and repression. But it indicates that, as the administrative machinery moves ahead with land recovery, the space in which residents can publicly challenge the project has also become a central issue.

When the Village Becomes a Construction Site

Meanwhile, the transformation goes beyond the land formally recovered for the project.

The July dossier describes a broader impact: homes demolished, livelihoods altered, families separated, and places of worship and community relationships affected by the relocation process.

Schools have also been affected.

A subsequent VHRDI update reports that the project directly affects at least seven educational institutions, involving more than 3,600 children and students. In some cases, school buildings were handed over while permanent replacement facilities were not yet operational, forcing students to use temporary or converted premises.

The issue is not simply the school itself. When a family is relocated, everyday distances change as well. The journey to school, work, and public services changes. The place where grandparents live changes. Relationships with neighbors change. The landscape in which a community has built its collective memory changes.

The Vietnamese Model and its Contradiction

The Gia Bình International Airport project illustrates a tension that accompanies many large-scale processes of transformation: how quickly can modernization proceed without transferring a significant share of its costs onto the people who occupy the territory being transformed?

Recently, Việt Nam has linked its development strategy to economic growth, infrastructure modernization, and the construction of new logistical connections. The Gia Bình International Airport is a key part of this vision. 

Official planning envisages an airport capable of serving tens of millions of passengers and millions of tonnes of cargo, integrated into an infrastructure network intended to transform the region’s economy.

But modernization does not take place in an empty space.

In a report published following his 2023 visit to Việt Nam, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to development, Surya Deva, emphasized the need for people to have “active, free, and meaningful” participation in development decisions. 

In Deva’s report, the right to development is not presented simply as a right to economic growth but as the right of people to participate in, contribute to and benefit from development while human rights are respected.

An airport can therefore be both a symbol of national modernization and a radical transformation for the communities living on the territory where it is built.

The issue, then, is not whether an international airport is “progress” or not. Infrastructure on this scale can generate economic and strategic benefits that local communities could not have obtained without a transformation of the territory.

The question is different: who participates in defining that transformation, and how are its costs distributed?

A New Geography is Formed

By September, more than 94% of the area targeted for land clearance had already been handed over. The speed of the operation is striking when we look at the official statistics: hectares cleared, billions of đồng paid, and thousands of families relocated. But these numbers tell only part of the story.

The state counts the hectares recovered, the money paid, the families relocated, and the plots allocated. These are essential figures for administering a project of this scale. They do not fully capture what it means to lose the territory in which a family has lived for generations.

The Gia Bình International Airport is thus born out of a double operation: building new infrastructure while redesigning the social space that existed before it.

Việt Nam calls this transformation development. The authorities have built a system of compensation, resettlement, and administrative procedures to make it possible. But the Gia Bình case shows that the success of a major project cannot be measured only by how quickly land is cleared; it must also consider what happens to the people who lived there.

A new runway can be built in a matter of months. A new home can be allocated. Land can be compensated. Rebuilding a community, and addressing the damage caused by its displacement, takes much longer.