Path cleared for giant China dam

A total of 1.2 million people will be displaced

Explosive experts have blown up a local government building in the town of Yongan, on the Yangtze River, as part of preparations for the opening of the highly controversial Three Gorges Dam.

Locals watched from the river banks

Several other buildings were also being demolished on Sunday.

The town is one of many along the river whose residents are being moved to make way for the dam - the world's largest - which will start holding back water next year.

The multi-million-dollar project has been widely criticised as a throwback to the Communist central planning era that will damage the environment and displace 1.2 million people.

Live show

With the countdown shown live on national television, Yongan township's four-storey government headquarters collapsed in a cloud of smoke and dust.

Next to go was the local power plant.

Local residents watched the process from the river bank far below.

The dam will create a 600km reservoir

State television said the explosions were an alarm bell to remind them that the town must be completely evacuated by the end of this year.

BBC News Online's Mike Jefferies, who visited Yongan recently, says that high up on the river bank opposite the town are large signs marking 135m - the height the water will rise to next year, and 175m - the point it will reach when the project is completed in 2009.

He says the Yangste itself is used like a motorway - tourists boats, barges, hydrofoils and ferries all squeezing past each other through the narrow waterway.

Environmental doubts

The vast civil engineering project was first dreamt up 80 years ago by Chinese revolutionary hero Dr Sun Yat Sen. It was not until the 1950s however, during Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, that China began to think seriously about damming the Yangtze.

But the Chinese authorities have had to contend with criticism at home and abroad ever since construction began in 1994.

Environmentalists warn that the scheme, which is designed to generate electricity and control flooding on the river, could actually cause massive silting and pollution upstream.

The World Bank refused to support the project because of these environmental concerns, while its design and construction standards have also been attacked by international experts.

The project has also been plagued by corruption.

China hopes the dam will stop devastating floods

More than 100 officials working on the project were convicted of embezzlement and other related charges in 2000, after more than $52m in resettlement funds went missing. One was sentenced to death.

Some local residents are being relocated to newly built towns on higher ground nearby, but many others are being moved to far away parts of China.

Several locals who have complained to the media about the relocation programme have been jailed.

And, while the government says it is relocating historic temples and ancient buildings situated close to the river, experts have acknowledged that they are racing against time to excavate important archaeological sites before the waters rise.