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UC students led a demonstration at the Citibank branch on Shattuck Avenue Wednesday, to protest the bank’s involvement in the Three Gorges Dam project in China. 

They charge that Citibank’s parent corporation, Citigroup, has underwritten two bond issues for the China Development Bank, which is financing the project. 

“The dam will create cheaper power for Chinese people, but we think there are better ways to do that,” said Aaron Scheinwald of the California Public Interest Research Group. 

The International Rivers Network, a Berkeley-based non-governmental organization, estimates that the dam, which is scheduled to be completed in 2014, will flood 350 miles of the Yangtze River Valley, displace 1.9 million people and further threaten the Baiji River Dolphin, an endangered species. 

The demonstrators said that they passed out 150 informational flyers in 20 minutes, and were getting favorable responses from Citibank customers.