BEIJING (CNN) -- Levees were blown up Sunday along a stretch of the swollen Yangtze River in an effort to divert floodwaters before they reached the provincial capital of Wuhan.

Police forced 50,000 residents in Jianli county out of their homes so workers could blow up secondary dikes in this area about 150 kilometers (93 miles) upriver from Wuhan, an industrial center with a population of 7 million.

The official Xinhua News Agency said displaced residents -- many of them "reluctant to move"-- have been promised compensation from the government for lost property and crops.

Engineers hope the diversion of 800 million cubic meters (28 billion cubic feet) of water into farmland will lower the raging Yangtze's water level by 10-25 centimeters (4-10 inches).

If successful, the deliberate flooding at Jianli Sunday could prevent further destruction in the partly flooded Jingjiang diversion area further upriver, where 330,000 people have already been evacuated to higher ground.

But if Sunday's dike-busting efforts don't lower the river enough, Xinhua reports that engineers plan to purposely flood the larger Jingjiang diversion area further. It was last used to divert flood waters from the Yangtze River in 1954, when floods killed more than 30,000 people.

News reports and official government estimates show the staggering size and impact of this summer's floods along the Yangtze. The floods have already affected some 240 million people in China, a fifth of the country's population and roughly equal to that of the United States.

Economic damage was estimated at $4.8 billion weeks ago, the last time the Chinese government released figures.

And more than 2,000 people have died this summer in floods caused by seasonal rains that came a month early and fell much harder than usual.

Further downstream, soldiers and civilian volunteers managed to plug a major breach in the Yangtze dike at Juijiang city after two days of frantic work.

When that dike burst Friday, it flooded a 4 square kilometer (1.6 square mile) area of Juijiang city and threatened to flood the rest of the city. Workers sunk eight barges and dumped truckloads of rocks, rice and soybeans into the breach to plug it up before the flood crest was expected to hit.

Overall 13.8 million people across China have been evacuated to higher ground this summer, but some have been reluctant to leave their homes.

In a small village in China's central Hubei Province, 13-year-old Chen Xiaohong and her father could only see the roof of their home but they refused to leave. Family members now spend most of their time in a small boat floating near their submerged home.

Another family in the area now lives on a tiny, muddy island just large enough for the few possessions they were able to save. Wang Zhou explained why he ignored government orders to move to a safer area.

"I am comfortable here. ... If the water stays as it is, there's no problem. But if it gets higher, it will get dangerous," he said.