Humanity's best bet at detecting aliens is a giant silver Chinese dish the size of 30 football fields - one that simultaneously showcases Beijing's abilities to deploy cutting-edge technologies and ignore objectors' rights as it seeks global prominence.

The 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in the southwest, which was launched in September and cost 1.2 billion yuan (HK$1.35 billion) to build, is the world's largest radio telescope.

Once fully operational, FAST will be able to peer deeper into space than ever before, examining pulsars, dark matter and gravitational waves - and searching for signs of life.

Authorities also hope it will bring tourist dollars to the province of Guizhou, one of China's poorest regions.

But it comes at the cost of forcibly displacing about 9,000 villagers who called the site in Pingtang county their home.

Many were outraged at being forced to leave the valley surrounded by forested karst hills and hundreds of families are now suing the government, with some cases being heard this week.

China built FAST as part of efforts to take on international rivals and raise its embarrassingly low tally of Nobel Prizes, said Peng Bo, director of China's National Astronomical Observatories, which oversees the telescope.

The dish dwarfs its nearest competitor, the United States' Puerto Rico- based Arecibo telescope, which is only 305 meters across.

"We said we had to be a little more daring because we had to surpass the US no matter what," Peng said. "I think we can get a few Nobel prizes out of it. We as Chinese people really want to win them."

FAST's receivers are more sensitive than any previous radio telescope, and its pioneering technology can change the shape of the dish to track celestial objects as the Earth rotates.

FAST needs a five kilometer-wide "radio silence" buffer zone around it with electronics banned to reduce interference.

Relocated residents would enjoy better living standards, the Xinhua News Agency said.

"Villagers in nearby communities admired their luck, saying they should 'thank the aliens,'" it said.

But villagers allege land grabs without compensation, forced demolitions and unlawful detentions, and up to 500 families are suing the Pingtang county government.

The rubble of their homes now lies under soil and new saplings in a tourist park just outside the radio silence zone, with a museum, a space-themed hotel and visitor reception facilities which will sell tickets for nearly HK$780 each.

Meng Xiujun, whose Guangzhou law firm is handling most of the cases, said officials tried to intimidate him, telling him he should "see the bigger picture for a key national project."

But he said: "This isn't just a matter of economic interests - once you start asking average citizens to kneel down or beat them, it becomes about human rights and problems with China's rule of law."

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE