4m people will be evacuated

Beijing: China plans to relocate four million people from the hillsides around the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest, in an unprecedented effort to stave off an environmental disaster.

The huge project will take between 10 and 15 years to complete, but was necessary as the area's "ecological safety" was at risk, according to senior officials.

The announcement comes after increasingly panicked reports of the environmental effects of the £13 billion (Dh97.1 million) dam, one of the world's most ambitious infrastructure projects, whose first stage opened in 2003.

It has enabled container shipping to reach all the way up the Yangtse river from Shanghai to Chongqing in the south-west.