The announcement Nov. 17 said that Guo Shuyan, director of the Office of the Three Gorges Project Construction Committee, has been replaced by Pu Haiqing, and that Mr. Guo’s deputy, He Wenbin, has also been dismissed.

The move follows a recent inspection trip to the Three Gorges area by Premier Wen Jiabao, who may be eager to remove officials in key project posts who are linked to former premier Li Peng.

Mr. Li, a long-time champion of the Three Gorges dam who recently published an enthusiastic diary of the project, routinely brushed aside any opposition to the scheme, including scientific warnings about its complexities and dangers, and allegations of rampant corruption in the resettlement operation.

Writing in the Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online, commentator Tian Jing said Mr. Wen had removed Mr. Guo from his post in a low-key manner in order not to embarrass his predecessor, Li Peng. He described the move as a good demonstration of Mr. Wen’s political tact and wisdom.

Mr. Guo’s successor, Pu Haiqing, is a native of Sichuan province, who graduated from Chongqing University in 1966. He was put in charge of Three Gorges resettlement affairs in 1991, and became mayor of Chongqing in 1996. Two years later, he was appointed a vice-director of the Office of the TGPCC.

It is not known whether the dismissal of Mr. Guo and his deputy was linked in any way to a recent highly publicized case in which Mr. Wen helped a worker in the Three Gorges area collect wages owed to him by a construction firm building the new county seat of Yunyang. But as head of the Office of the TGPCC, which manages the day-to-day affairs of the Three Gorges scheme, as well as director of the project’s inspection bureau, Mr. Guo should have been aware of such problems.

The case has given rise to charges in the state-controlled media of official incompetence and corruption, which Mr. Wen has appeared determined to root out.

People’s Daily, the official organ of the Communist Party, asked: "Why were workers owed money for more than a year? Did local governments know anything about it, or did local officials fail to do a good job in dealing with it?"

A new Beijing-based newspaper, the New Capital News (Xin jingbao), traced the problem back to the central government’s own resettlement budget, which it said only covered about half the cost of building new towns for people displaced by the Three Gorges dam.

Meanwhile, the Beijing Youth Daily (Beijing qingnian bao) raised the issue of corruption related to construction projects, which it says "has become one of the most apparent and astonishing categories of official corruption in China. Like a serious chronic disease, this kind of corruption has become so stubbornly entrenched that it is very hard to eradicate."

 

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The Three Gorges Project Construction Committee

The TGPCC is the top policymaking body for the Three Gorges project, while the Office of the TGPCC is responsible for overseeing the scheme on a day-to-day basis.

Premier Wen Jiabao is director of the TGPCC, which has six vice-directors:

Zeng Peiyan, vice premier
Pu Haiqing, new director of the Office of the TGPCC
Ma Kai, director of the State Commission of Development and Planning
Luo Qingquan, governor of Hubei province
Wang Hongju, mayor of Chongqing
Lu Youmei, general-manager of the Three Gorges Project Development Corp.
 

The TGPCC has an additional two dozen members, drawn from various ministries and provinces.