South China Morning Post
May 13, 2006

Almost no money has been embezzled from the Three Gorges Dam relocation funds, officials in charge of the controversial project have claimed.

Beijing – Almost no money has been embezzled from the Three Gorges Dam relocation funds, officials in charge of the controversial project have claimed. Although mainland auditors reported in January that 473 million yuan (HK$444 million) in resettlement funds had gone missing, officials denied there had been any large-scale corruption. “Ninety per cent of this sum was used without getting approval. This did not involve bribes. The real graft only involved 15 million yuan, or just 3.7 per cent of the 470 million,” said Guo Shuyuan, deputy director of the Three Gorges Project Committee. Since 1993, 276 officials had been disciplined or punished by the party and 136 handed over to the courts. Officials also blamed a US equipment manufacturer for a tragedy that occurred on September 3 when three construction workers died and 31 were seriously injured in an accident involving a concrete conveyor lift system. An investigation is under way and there will be a tightening of safety management, officials said. Work on the project has resumed.

There was no lack of demand for electricity from the dam, although there was a surplus in the Chongqing and Hubei provinces around the dam, said officials. And power could be delivered to Guangdong province where there was a market, they added. “Per capita electricity consumption in China ranks 70th or 80th in the world, so China’s electricity consumption is still at a stage where it is very low, so we have a huge potential market for electricity,” said Lu Youmei, president of the China Yangtze Three Gorges Project Development Corp. Officials insist the relocation is going smoothly and that 253,200 people had been moved by August. The original plan allowed for the removal of 150,000 by the end of last year, 500,000 by 2003 and up to 1.2 million by the time the dam is finished in 2009. Mr Guo admitted some peasants had written petitions and staged protests complaining that local officials had embezzled funds. He blamed some of the peasants, whom he said had volunteered to relocate outside their district but when the Government decided this year to raise compensation by 5,000 yuan to 35,000 yuan per person, they had returned to demand the extra money. “We demand that local governments deal with these questions seriously and settle the accounts with the local residents,” Mr Guo said.