Chongqing Unveils Big Relocation PlanChongqing Municipality will relocate 50,000 people living in the dam area of the Three Gorges Power Project to other parts of China in 2001.This will be the largest group of people ever resettled since the project formally started in 1994. They will be arranged in over 100 counties and cities in Shanghai Municipality, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Shandong, Fujian, Jiangsu and Jiangxi provinces, said a relocation bureau official. The Chongqing dam area has relocated 10,000 people so far this year, accumulating experience for the unprecedented relocation effort to be made next year, he added. As a key dam area to be inundated by 2009 when the Three Gorges Project is expected to be completed, Chongqing is to relocate 100,000 residents to other parts of the country, accounting for one-twelfth of the total amount relocated. The Three Gorges hydro-electric power project on the Yangtze River is the largest of its kind in the world. The project is expected to take up 632 square kilometers, including 24,000 hectares of farmland. Depending upon various factors, it is estimated that about 1.13 million people will have to be resettled. |
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