China will beef up supervision and audits on the fund use in the gigantic Three Gorges Dam construction project and relocation work during next four years to weed out corruption, an official said Tuesday.

The Three Gorges Construction Committee under the State Council, or the central government, will improve its anti-corruption mechanism while stepping up cooperation with the National Audit Office and the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to "ensure every cent for the project not be misused," said Xia Kailiang, deputy director-general of the committee's supervision office.

The Three Gorges Project, the world's biggest hydroelectric scheme, began in 1993. And interest payments and inflation are expected to push the project's total cost to 180 billion yuan (US$22 billion) by its completion in 2009. Nearly half of the investment goes to the relocation of affected people, said Xia.

In comparison to the amount of invested capital and the progress of the project for the past 11 years, investment control has kept within the initial budget estimation, with a small surplus, Xia acknowledged.

He said, "the capital management on dam construction is especially strict and effective. We have not found any case of embezzling public funds."

China raised the money for the huge damn with a special state-collected construction fund, which covered approximately 40 percent of the total expense, said Xia. The remaining shortfall comes from loans of the State Development Bank, overseas export credits, commercial loans and bonds issues.

By the end of 2004, the amount of investment put in the dam construction came to 51.9 billion yuan (US$6.25 billion), while that used for residents displacement reached 43 billion yuan (US$5.18), both exceeding 80 percent of the budget, according to the committee.

Despite the achievement, Xia also noted that corruption did happened with the project, especially in the management for relocation fund, but he insisted "corruption and funds embezzlement has been minimal."

About 1.13 million people living along the Yangtze River, including 405,000 farmers will be resettled from the areas due to be inundated by the reservoir. Of these people, 166,000 are expected to be relocated to 11 more developed provinces and municipalities, as far away as Shanghai or Guangdong province.

To date, said Xia, approximately 965,500 people have been relocated, accounting for over 85 percent of the planned migrant population.

Complexity of the fund management work makes a seedbed for corruption when vast investment funds are handled by an army of officials, said Xia

"Just imagine that the management of the resettlement fund concerns such a large area of 21 provinces and municipalities and the fund is in links of use at eight different administrative levels from the central government to a person to be relocated," he said.

"Even though, we won't let one single criminals escape from punishment," he said.

By the end of 2003, Xia's office had uncovered 310 cases on resettlement fund management with 349 suspects and 58.67 million yuan (US$7.07 million) involved.

An official, in charge of relocation work in southwestern Chongqing Municipality, was executed last year after being convicted of extorting 12 million yuan (US$1.45 million) in relocation funds, the largest sum even found, said Xia.

"The amount of misused funds make up for 0.136 percent of the resettlement budget, among which, 43 million yuan (US$5.18 million) had been recovered," he said.

The Chinese government was paying greater attention to the resettlement than to the dam itself, "as people are more important," said Xia.

During the past seven years, the discipline inspection departments and supervisory organizations have kept a close lookout for the project's fund management and the National Audit Office conducted special examinations to "guarantee the money really goes to the needed," said Xia.

"And we found towns and villages, the bottom management level of resettlement fund, is most vulnerable to corruption," he said.

To tackle the problem, a supervision network, which includes departments of discipline inspection, supervisory, auditing and examination, banks and the governments in the reservoir areas, was adopted for regular examination, said Xia.

In addition, he said, local governments are required to set up a transparent system of fund compensation and receive supervision of the residents.

The Three Gorges Dam started to generating power in 2004. When finished in 2009, the dam will have 26 turbines -- the largest in the world -- pumping out 18,200 megawatts of electric power, equal to about 10 big coal-fired power stations using 50 million tons of coal a year.

The dam is also scheduled to end disastrous annual flooding on the Yangtze River, which ranks only behind the Amazon and the Congo rivers in terms of water flow, and make river shipping safer.

(Xinhua News Agency March 30, 2005)