Construction of a new hydropower project, said to be the third largest in China, is scheduled to begin on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River on Sunday, project sources said Thursday.

With a designed installed capacity of 6 million kilowatts, the Xiangjiaba Hydropower Project will be built on the lower reaches of the Jinshajiang River, a major tributary of the Yangtze which is the longest waterway in the country, said sources with the project headquarters.

According to plan, about 88,900 people from three counties of Yunnan Province and three counties of Sichuan Province will be resettled to make way for the 28.9 billion yuan (US$3.6 billion) project.

The project can generate 30.747 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually when it is completed in 2015.

The Xiangjiaba project is one of a series of hydropower plants China has planned to build on the Jinshajiang River in the southwest to supply electricity to its economically more developed coastal regions and boost resources-rich but poor western region.

Construction of the Xiluodu Hydropower Station, the first hydropower station on the Jinsha River, began in last December and due to be completed in 2015.

The Xiluodu project is designed to generate 12.6 million kilowatts of electricity annually, next only to the Three Gorges Project, the largest in the world, which is being built on the Yangtze.

The Xiangjiaba and Xiluodu hydropower projects would help reduce silt problem in the Three Gorges Reservoir, said Zhou Shuangchao, a media center official with the Yangtze River Three Gorges Corporation, which takes charge of these projects.

These projects would also play its role in flood control, irrigation and navigation upon completion, Zhou said.

The Jinshajiang River which is 2,290 kilometers long, originates in Tanggula Range and flows through Qinghai, Tibet, Yunnan, and Sichuan.

Water is mostly stored in the river's middle and lower reaches where China plans to build 12 hydropower stations to share a 59.08- million-kilowatts installed capacity.

Besides the Xiangjiaba and Xiluodu projects, the government has also allocated money for preliminary preparations on the Hutiaoxia (Tiger Jumping Gorge) plant in Yunnan, while another Baihetan plant is also in deliberation.

(Xinhua News Agency November 24, 2006)