Most of the resettled Three Gorges residents now live in spacious new apartments with a per capita housing floor space of 25 square meters, which is larger than that of their new neighbors, according to the Three Gorges Project Construction Committee of the State Council.
China has decided to relocate 125,000 people living in the dam area of the Three Gorges Project, on the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, to 11 provinces and cities in nine years.
The work started on a trial basis last year. The first group of the Three Gorges residents have settled in eight provinces. Most of these people now live in apartment buildings, which have passed the government's quality appraisal. Thousands of the new settlers have contracted farmland to make a living.
Some 6,600 people will move out of the dam area this year to Shanghai, Shandong, Fujian, Hunan, Guangdong and six other provinces and cities, which have decided to provide each new settler with 1,000 to 5,000 yuan for building their houses.
The dam area is going to be submerged once the gigantic project is completed in 2009, and when the water level of the Three Gorges Reservoir rises to a height of 175 meters, 26,000 hectares of farmland is expected to be covered by water.
(People's Daily)
