A vice major of Chongqing Municipality today denounced as "sheer fabrication" some overseas reports that there are refugees in the Three Gorges Reservoir area. Gan Yuping did this when attending the 3rd Session of the Ninth National People's Congress. Reporters from some overseas media asked the Chongqing delegation of NPC deputies about this in the past few days.

Gan, who has been in charge of resettling people dislocated by the Three Gorges Project for quite some time, said that relocation has been going on smoothly according to the will of those to be relocated and that people in the reservoir area remain stable. Some 70,000 people will be resettled in 11 cities and provinces including Shanghai in east China and the neighboring Sichuan province. Officials of the recipient places and representatives of farmers to be relocated have had contacts. By year end, resettlement of people away from the reservoir area on a trial basis will cover 6,000 farmers, Gan said.

There are 1,400 enterprises in the reservoir area that need to be moved elsewhere, and some loss-making enterprises have gone through the procedure of bankruptcy, with laid-off workers well relocated, he said.

Chongqing had moved 190,000 people by the end of 1999, and by 2003, 500,000 more people will be resettled when the first units of generators of the Three Gorges Project become operational, Gan said, adding that the gigantic project will necessitate the relocation of more than one million, of whom 85 percent live in Chongqing Municipality.