Million moved by Chinese dam

The town of Fengdu is set to be destroyed

China's controversial Three Gorges Dam is set to become the world's largest hydro-electric project when it is completed in 2009. Its reservoir will stretch 563 kilometres (350 miles) along the Yangtze River, forcing the relocation of about 1.5 million people.

The BBC's Tony Cheng travelled down the Yangtze to see preparations for the flooding.

Fengdu is a smallish city about 400km (249 miles) away from the new dam, the first stop for many of the freighters and ferries travelling downstream from the regional capital, Chongqing.

It has been there since the Han dynasty.

However, despite the distance from the Three Gorges, Fengdu is now a ghost town. Most of the buildings are still standing, but they have been emptied of their inhabitants and stripped of their contents.

Within three months they will be demolished and once flooding starts next year, the whole city will disappear underwater.

Forced to move

The banks of the Yangtze are lined with cities and towns like Fengdu.

The volume of trade that passes downstream has always attracted people, and farmers have taken advantage of the surrounding land, which is fertile and rich with the nutrients from the river's silt deposits.

Nearly all of these settlements are being destroyed to make way for the dam's reservoir which will raise river levels by more than 80 metres (262 foot). The total number of displaced people will exceed 1.5 million.

Not surprisingly, such a large forced migration has become a very sensitive subject in China.

The government has offered compensation of 15,000 yuan ($1,800).

But little has been done to fund relocation projects and many people are bitter that they will lose their ancestral land.

Ambitious plans

The reason for such a momentous project, according to the government, is to control the river whose floods have caused untold damage and claimed innumerable lives throughout Chinese history.

Settlements along the river will be wiped out

This year alone, floodwater ruined a million hectares of arable land in Hunan province, and left 250,000 people homeless. In 1998 the Yangtze claimed 4,000 lives.

Just as important is the economic issue. While China's southern coastal regions have boomed in the past decade's economic reforms, central China has been slow to catch on.

The government wants to stimulate growth with the 18.2 million kilowatts of cheap energy that the dam will produce, the equivalent of 18 nuclear power plants.

Jenny Dai, a young student at the Three Gorges University in Yichang, believes the dam will provide her generation with a better future.

"I think for our country it is a good thing. It will definitely benefit the lives of the people living near the Changjiang (Yangtze) river".

But many people are sceptical.

Dai Qing is a journalist whose book "Yangtze, Yangtze" claimed the dam was just a showpiece for the Communist Party's top leadership. It got her jailed for 10 months.

"The dam is just a political project, to give an opportunity to the fat bureaucrats who award the construction contracts and the officials in charge of the resettlement to get money for themselves," she says.

And she is sceptical that the dam really will regenerate the economy of the Yangtze basin.

"The project will cost over $24 billion," she says. "The electricity is too expensive when you take into consideration building the dam.

"Even the officials in charge of the project joke that they couldn't afford to buy the electricity themselves".

The cost is not just a financial one. As you enter the Three Gorges it is easy to see why they are famed for their natural beauty, and have been the source of inspiration for some of China's greatest painters and writers.

I hear the incessant cry of monkeys from the banks
My light barge has passed countless folds of hills

Li Bai, poet

Li Bai and Du Fu, the country's most celebrated poets, both lived in the area during the 7th century and celebrated the magnificence of the gorges in their most famous poems.

Although the gorges will not completely disappear, much of their majesty will be diminished by the river's rising waters.

Not everyone has been moved away yet.

Fengdu may have been cleared of its inhabitants, but many of the other towns along the route are inhabited by the old and incapacitated who are reluctant to give up their homes.

Most of them have nowhere else to go. Sitting in makeshift stalls by the piers on the river, they survive selling snacks and knick-knacks to tourists.

Even if the Three Gorges dam succeeds in taming the Yangtze and providing cheap energy to central China, it is unlikely that they will ever reap the rewards.