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'People-first' plan to govern Sichuan reconstruction
By Huang Zhiling and Cheng Shangxuan (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-08-09 08:43 His city aims to finish reconstruction within three years and bring development to a higher level within five years. Goals include housing solutions for quake victims, enabling residents to earn as much or more than before the quake, gradually relieving emotional impacts from the disaster and building infrastructure that equals or surpasses pre-quake levels. Provincial officials, the Chengdu municipal committee of the Communist Party of China and the Chengdu municipal government are studying reconstruction of quake-hit neighbors such as Mianyang, Deyang and Wenchuan, the epicenter of the May 12 earthquake. Chengdu's reconstruction will proceed in line with the concept of integrating urban and rural development, he added. Unlike reconstruction following the Tangshan earthquake in 1976 that killed 240,000, Chengdu will give full play to market mechanisms and mobilize different sectors of society to participate in its reconstruction in the era of the market economy, Liu said. The city will provide six housing choices for quake victims, including economically affordable houses, low-rent houses, houses built by victims themselves or with the cooperation of others, houses built by the government, houses built on original sites and those built at new sites. Reconstruction by the government using unified planning can save land. The model is being implemented on a trial basis in urban areas of Dujiangyan, a city under Chengdu's administration. Precise plans have been solicited from across the globe, Liu said. Building houses by victims themselves or with the cooperation of others has been adopted mainly in rural areas. The government will oversee construction plans to ensure houses can resist earthquakes. It will supervise the whole construction process from design to construction, then check and approve houses. Purchase of construction materials such as steel reinforcement bars, cement and timber will be part of unified planning to save costs, the deputy mayor said. Because the 20,000-yuan subsidy for each self-built farmhouse is inadequate, the government will give consideration to farmers' needs for loans, he said. Quake victims will have to relocate if they lived in areas that cannot be rebuilt. Relocation will be supervised in line with existing policies, drawing lessons from the Yangtze River Three Gorges project and Gezhou Dam project in Hubei province, he said. Liu said Chengdu will invest 11 billion yuan to build the Chengdu-Dujiangyan intercity railway in October. The rail service, expected to be completed at the end of 2010, will run every three minutes and arrive at its destinations in half an hour. The Sichuan provincial government has approved construction of the Chengdu-Mianyang-Leshan intercity railway, which will shorten the time of transporting materials to many cities and counties in the province, he said.
(China Daily 08/09/2008 page8)
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