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)