Labor costs on these projects are closer to $10/hour these days. The workers get paid reasonably well because their job is in shifts and seasonal. They're also

Labor costs on these projects are closer to $10/hour these days. The workers get paid reasonably well because their job is in shifts and seasonal. They're also usually provided some basic housing and food, health insurance and transport. Eminent domain compensation also tends to be very high for this kind of projects. People intentionally seek farmland that might be in the way of construction to get paid. Since it's all technically long-term "rent" in the communist regime, they usually get compensated on a yearly basis for as long as the rent stands, which may be as long as 5-15 years. And for the environmental impact studies, if Western media and people can't read Chinese, it doesn't mean these studies do not exist. China is very serious about ecology in the last years, it's not there yet, but it's moving in the right direction.