China will move the last group of more than 100,000 residents
away from the Three Gorges reservoir area by the end of next year
as the final part of a massive relocation plan launched in 1993 to
resettle 1.35 million people.
About 100,000 residents and five businesses will move from
Kaixian County in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality to make way for the
gigantic Three Gorges reservoir, whose water level will eventually
reach 175 meters when the world's largest water conservation
project is completed in 2008, said Wang Xian'gang, director of the
Chongqing Municipal Relocation and Resettlement Bureau.
In central-southern Hubei Province, about 8,000 people will also
be moved out of the reservoir area, local authorities said.
Altogether, 1.35 million people, or 220,000 more than the
original plan, will have to bid farewell to their ancestral homes
and settle down elsewhere by the end of 2008, a year earlier than
scheduled, Zhang Baoxin, a senior official with the Office of the
Three Gorges Project Construction Committee of the State Council,
has said.
Natural population growth and human migration have been cited as
the reasons behind the increase in the total number of people to be
displaced.
The Chongqing authorities have moved out 1.03 million people,
1,392 businesses, two cities and 90 townships since the relocation
project was launched in 1993, Wang said.
In Hubei Province, more than 250,000 people have been
transferred from their homes in the planned reservoir area to other
places since 1993.
By the end of 2006, China had input 54.4 billion yuan (US$6.8
billion) into the relocation project, Zhang has said.
The Chinese central government and local governments will invest
another 55 billion yuan (US$6.88 billion) to settle residents
relocated by the Three Gorges Project and support local industries
to provide enough job opportunities in the next five years, Wang
Hongju, mayor of Chongqing, has said.
The fund will also be used in infrastructure construction,
environment protection and social development undertakings in the
region, he said.
Launched in 1993 and being built at an estimated cost of 180
billion yuan (US$22.5 billion), the Three Gorges Project on the
middle reaches of the Yangtze River, China's longest, will boast 26
generators with a combined generating capacity of 18.2 million kw
and be able to generate 84.7 billion kwh of electricity
annually.
(Xinhua News Agency June 16, 2007)