CHONGQING, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- About 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.
Two million of them will be relocated in the next five years.
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.
With a history of more than 3,000 years, Chongqing a major industrial and
commercial hub in west China.
The city's gross domestic product reached 348.6 billion yuan (45.8 billion
U.S. dollars) 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 22.5 billion U.S. dollars).
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.