Officials in Chongqing, southwest China, are busy with the resettlement of 54,000 rural people who have to move this year for the construction of the Three Gorges Project, the largest multi-purpose power project in the world.

The figure is 4,000 more than the annual resettlement target, said Wang Xingyu, in charge of the resettlement work in the city.

About 43,000 people will settle in over 100 counties in 11 better-off provinces in east China. The rest will move to five other counties in Chongqing that are out of the dam site.

Wang said the people living in the area to be inundated are eager to move out, and more than one million square meters of new houses have been built in the target places of the emigrants.

A total of 125,000 rural people in Chongqing and Hubei Province will be moved out in 2000-2002 for the construction of the mammoth project. Most of them will go to the 11 municipalities and provinces in east China.

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