By the end of 2002, the relocation of people for building the second phase of China's Three Gorges power project had been completed, with a total of 645,200 people moved to new homes.

The figure was released from an on-going meeting this week in Chongqing on relocating residents at the Three Gorges project.

The world's biggest hydropower project on the Yangtze River's Three Gorges has involved the world's biggest relocation problem. Altogether 1.13 million residents mainly spread through central and western China's Hubei Province and Chongqing Municipality have needed to be relocated.

The massive effort started in 1992 and by the end of last year, 650,000 residents in Hubei and Chongqing had been moved from the reservoir area, some 57 percent of the required total.

The successful effort will make it possible to begin filling the reservoir which is expected to start in June.

The massive relocation will also help improve the economic structure of the vast reservoir area. In future, forestry, tourism and stockbreeding will become its key industries.

In the past the reservoir area covering a river section more than 600 km long, has suffered severe soil erosion. Moving people away and closing some heavy-polluting industries will improve the local environment.

With relocation completed for the second phase of the Three Gorges, the governments of Hubei and Chongqing have begun to prepare to move people for the third and fourth phases of the massive project.

(Xinhua News Agency January 21, 2003)