China's Reservoirs Facilitate People's Life

Looking at the reservoir water which inundated their homes, Taichang villagers who used to live in a mountain valley in central China's Hunan Province show little homesickness.

Their village was in one of China's most impoverished mountainous regions. Before the damming of the reservoir, they were moved out to safe regions to start a new life, planting orchards and tea with the help of the Hunan Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

After the establishment of New China in 1949, over 80,000 reservoirs and 240,000 km of embankment have been built and renovated around the country, which involved the resettlement of more than 10 million people.

All of them have been properly settled, and have gradually become better off than before, said Zhang Jirao, deputy minister of water resources, at a national reservoir resettlement work meeting.

According to ministry figures, the per-capita annual income of reservoir re-settlers arranged by the central government stood at 642 yuan in 1995. It increased to 1,059 yuan in 2000. The poverty rate of the resettled population was brought down from over 80 percent in 1985 to lower than 30 percent in 2000.

China has attached great importance to the lives of resettled people. Since the market reform was introduced in 1978, more creative measures have been applied to the resettlement work, along with poverty relief programs and the adjustment of regional economic structures, Zhang said.

The achievements have been affirmed by experts from the United Nations and the World Bank, the official said.

The water conservation works built for flood-control, power generation, irrigation and water supply systems have created new aquatic products bases, such as the Feilaixia Reservoir in Guangdong Province, and new scenic spots, such as Thousand Island Lake in Zhejiang Province.

The world's most gigantic reservoir resettlement program is now under way at the Three Gorges reservoir area along the Yangtze River, which involves some 1.13 million people. China has decided to make comprehensive use of resettlement fund to relocate these people.

China has piloted a new reservoir resettlement method by encouraging more Three Gorges resettlers to move to the more developed coastal regions rather than being concentrated in the crowded new settlements built adjoining the dam. For resettlers who choose either way, the government has created favorable policies to help all of them start new lives.

The number of resettlers who decide to move to the coastal regions is expected to exceed 120,000 by the year 2003, which will not only reduce the population pressure on the Three Gorges region, but also alleviate the deterioration of the ecology in the region, according to a water resources official.

Meanwhile, another big resettlement project is under way at Xiaolangdi on the Yellow River, in the northern part of China. So far, 150,000 people have been properly resettled, accounting for 77 percent of the total resettlement work.

The reservoir will prevent the river running dry in drought seasons, so as to safeguard production and the supply of water at the lower reaches.

Zhang disclosed that the central government and local governments at various levels accumulated some three billion yuan in special funds for reservoir resettlement works between 1996 and 2000, which was sufficient to ensure the success of the work.






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