As many as 9,110 people will be relocated from China's Guizhou province ahead of the opening of the five-hundred- metre Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), provincial officials said.
All residents living within five kilometres of the listening device will be relocated to other places to "create a sound electromagnetic wave environment", state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
Each resident will receive 12,000 yuan (USD 1,800) in compensation from the government's eco-migration bureau and each involved ethnic minority household with housing difficulties will get 10,000 yuan subsidy from the provincial ethnic and religious committee.
Construction of the FAST began in March 2011 to "help us to search for intelligent life outside of the galaxy", Wu Xiangping, director-general of the Chinese Astronomical Society has earlier said.
Thousands of people have been forced out of their ancestral homes in China in the last decade, owing to the large-scale infrastructure building programmes in China, like in highway and dam projects.