The Ruyi Group of east China's Shandong
Province inked an agreement during the ongoing session of the
National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, to
invest 1.5 billion yuan (US$181.2 million) in a labor-intensive
textile project in Chongqing
Municipality, located in the Three Gorges Reservoir area.
Total investment in projects aimed at assisting the 1.2 million
people required to relocate as a result of the massive Three Gorges
Dam project has now topped 20 billion yuan (US$2.4 billion).
As of the end of 2004, 21 provinces and municipalities, more
than 10 large and medium cities and 50-plus government
organizations had donated 4.0 billion yuan (US$483.3 million) in
aid to the reservoir area and invested over 15 billion yuan (US$1.8
billion), said NPC deputy Pu Haiqing, who is also the office
director of the Three Gorges Project Construction Committee.
The contributions pooled from localities cover almost half of
the money needed to relocate 1.2 million local residents in the
Three Gorges region and help them adapt to their new lives, said
Guo.
By the end of 2004, more than 980,000 local people had been
already displaced from the reservoir area, nearly 82 percent of all
those who have to leave their homes for the world's largest
waterpower project.
Nearly 85 percent of the displaced people were from the
Chongqing area and the remaining 15 percent from Hubei Province in
central China.
"To date, 160,000 relocatees have moved to the relatively
affluent coastal regions, including Shanghai Municipality and
Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces in east China," he said on the
sidelines of the ongoing annual parliament session.
The former homes of those being displaced are gradually being
submerged as the reservoir fills. The 185-meter dam is scheduled to
be complete in 2009.
The gigantic water-control project began storing water in 2003.
Its power generation capacity is currently 89 billion
kilowatt-hours, and will eventually reach 100 billion.
Eleven generators so far come on line at the Three Gorges
hydropower plant since July 10, 2003, when the first generator
became operational. The project reported profit of 5.3 billion yuan
(US$640.4 million) in 2004.
Launched in 1993, the Three Gorges Water Control Project is also
designed to control floods on the middle and lower reaches of the
Yangtze.
(Xinhua News Agency March 14, 2005)