At least four million people from the Three Gorges Reservoir
area are to be relocated to cities in the next 10 to 15 years,
according to Vice Mayor Yu Yuanmu of Chongqing Municipality.
Under the 2007-2020 rural and urban development plan of
Chongqing, which was approved by the State Council on Sep. 20, the
resettlements were necessary to protect the ecology of the
reservoir area, said Yu.
The country's most populous municipality was set for vigorous
urban expansion.
More than four million people currently living in northeast and
southwest Chongqing, where the Three Gorges Reservoir extends for
600 km, would be encouraged to resettle on the urban outskirts
about an hour's bus ride from downtown Chongqing, according to a
report on sina.com.
No details about the massive relocation are available, but Yu
said the ecological safety of the Three Gorges Reservoir area was
at risk from the growing population.
"On one hand, the reservoir area has a vulnerable ecological
environment, and the natural conditions make large scale
urbanization or serious overpopulation impossible here," said the
official.
On the other hand, Yu said, the area was already suffering from
overpopulation and poor conditions for industrial development.
In March 1997, the city, which sits on the upper reaches of the
Yangtze River, was approved as a centrally-administered
municipality, the fourth after Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin. It
was expected to spearhead economic development in China's central
and western regions.
Covering 82,000 square kilometers, the municipality has a
population of more than 27.98 million, 55 percent of whom live in
rural areas.
The city's gross domestic product reached 348.6 billion yuan
(US$45.8 billion) in 2006. However, its growth has been seriously
unbalanced. The per capita GDP of Wuxi county was 3,593 yuan last
year, only a tenth of that in the developed Yuzhong District.
On June 7, Chongqing and Chengdu, capital of neighboring Sichuan
Province, were selected by the National Development and Reform
Commission, the country's top economic planner, as pilot cities to
work towards coordinated and balanced development between urban and
rural areas.
Planners estimate that Chongqing will have a population of 30
million, 16.15 million in urban areas, an urbanization rate of 53.8
percent by 2010, and the urban population will be 21.6 million of
the city's total population of 31 million by 2020, an urbanization
rate of 70 percent.
Last month, officials and experts admitted the Three Gorges Dam
project had caused an array of ecological ills, including more
frequent landslides and pollution, and if preventive measures are
not taken, it could lead to an environmental "catastrophe".
Tan Qiwei, vice mayor of Chongqing, told a forum in Wuhan, that
the shore of the reservoir had collapsed in 91 places and a total
of 36 km had caved in.
Frequent geological disasters have threatened the lives of
residents around the reservoir area, said Huang Xuebin, head of the
Headquarters for Prevention and Control of Geological Disasters in
the Three Gorges Reservoir.
Construction of the project has already necessitated the
resettlement of at least 1.2 million people.
The dam, the world's largest water control facility, was
launched in 1993, with a budget of 180 billion yuan (about US$22.5
billion).
Located on the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, the project
comprises a 185-meter-high dam, completed in early 2006, a
five-tier ship lock, and the reservoir.
(Xinhua News Agency October 11, 2007)