By the end of 2002, the relocation of people for building the
second phase of China's Three Gorges power project had been
completed, with a total of 645,200 people moved to new homes.
The figure was released from an on-going meeting this week in
Chongqing on relocating residents at the Three Gorges project.
The world's biggest hydropower project on the Yangtze River's Three
Gorges has involved the world's biggest relocation problem.
Altogether 1.13 million residents mainly spread through central and
western China's Hubei Province and Chongqing Municipality have
needed to be relocated.
The massive effort started in 1992 and by the end of last year,
650,000 residents in Hubei and Chongqing had been moved from the
reservoir area, some 57 percent of the required total.
The successful effort will make it possible to begin filling the
reservoir which is expected to start in June.
The massive relocation will also help improve the economic
structure of the vast reservoir area. In future, forestry, tourism
and stockbreeding will become its key industries.
In
the past the reservoir area covering a river section more than 600
km long, has suffered severe soil erosion. Moving people away and
closing some heavy-polluting industries will improve the local
environment.
With relocation completed for the second phase of the Three Gorges,
the governments of Hubei and Chongqing have begun to prepare to
move people for the third and fourth phases of the massive
project.
(Xinhua News Agency January 21, 2003)