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China will strive to guarantee the quality of the second phase of construction on the Three Gorges project, Premier Zhu Rongji said in Beijing recently.

Zhu made the remark at a meeting of the Three Gorges Project Construction Committee under the State Council.

He said the country would tighten supervision on construction as the project had entered a crucial stage.

China would make full preparations for the second damming of the Yangtze River and ensure that the reservoir would start storing water and the project would generate power in the next year, Zhu said.

The Yangtze River will be dammed again, with cofferdams to be built on the open-cut diversion channel, for the third phase of construction on the 665-meter section to complete the 2,309-meter-long dam on the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, the country's largest water conservancy project.

The Chinese government placed great importance on the situation of those people displaced by the Three Gorges project, Zhu said.

Over one million residents from the planned reservoir area have had to leave their homes and move to neighboring areas while the dam is being built.

They were being encouraged to migrate to more developed coastal provinces in east China and the administrations would continue providing assistance to help them find new homes and jobs, he added.

The Three Gorges project began in 1993 and the second phase is almost complete. More than 640,000 people have been moved and new houses totaling 28.44 million square meters in floor space have been built for the migrants.