What cost as China tames mother river

China Travel Services

COMMUNIST leaders since Mao Zedong have dreamt of taming the mighty Yangtze — China's flood-prone "mother river" that has nurtured and abused the country's people throughout 5000 turbulent years.

Today the "walls of stone" that Mao envisaged back in the 1950s, in the infancy of the People's Republic of China, will be completed with the final pouring of concrete for the massive Three Gorges Dam.

The Chinese Government will be hoping that the completion of the dam (the entire project will be finished in 2009) will quell opposition as efficiently as it will tame the Yangtze floods that killed more than 300,000 people last century alone.

But the world's biggest hydro-electric project and the pride of Chinese engineering, which has swallowed $A33 billion and counting, 630 square kilometres of farmland, two cities, 11 counties, 116 towns and 1200 villages and necessitated moving more than a million people, seems set to continue as a battleground between authorities and the emboldened environmental movement.

Government engineers agree there has been environmental damage but argue that the benefits — clean power, flood control and improved access to central China from the eastern ports — outweigh the drawbacks for the 220 million people who live in the Yangtze basin.

Environmentalists and scientists fear the reservoir behind the dam will become a giant cesspool that will affect water quality for the 30 million residents of China's biggest urban conglomeration at nearby Chongqing.

They say that its flood-control benefits are exaggerated and that the dam has caused a bottleneck for shipping, with lengthy delays to get through five levels of locks, and that the migrants it has created will cause social turmoil for generations to come.

There are also concerns that such a massive re-ordering of nature is increasing instability in a seismic-sensitive area.

The dam's most outspoken opponent is Dai Qing, a journalist turned activist whose book Yangtze! Yangtze , which argued that the dam is a waste of money and an environment disaster, brought her 10 months in a maximum security jail.

Some activists consider the Three Gorges a dead issue and are focusing on other pending disasters, such as the even bigger $66 billion south-north water diversion project. But Ms Dai said Three Gorges would remain a flashpoint because the problems it had created would only become more evident.

The dam was finally approved by Mao's successor, Deng Xiaoping. Then party secretary Zhao Ziyang warned him that the project was economic, political and technical trouble.

The opposition spurred Deng and his supporters on, although China's normally acquiescent parliament, the annual National People's Congress, made an unprecedented show of opposition, with nearly a third of delegates voting against the project or abstaining in April 1992 when it was formally approved.

"Deng Xiaoping made two mistakes: one is June 4th (Tiananmen Square), the other is Three Gorges Dam," Ms Dai said. "China's rivers are being ruined by these greedy and corrupt officials."

Work began on the dam, which is 181 metres high and 2.3 kilometres wide, in 1993.

In 2003, a year after its left bank was completed, the reservoir was filled to 135 metres. The first generator began producing power shortly after.

Today's concrete pour will complete the right bank, nine months ahead of schedule.

The entire project is due to be completed and fully operational in 2009, when the reservoir level will rise to 175 metres above sea level.

Last month, the Government said that another 80,000 people would be moved to new villages because their homes will be flooded when the reservoir level is raised later this year.

Patricia Adams, of Canadian environmental advocacy organisation Probe International, said governments continue to be attracted by huge infrastructure projects over smaller, more efficient, projects or reining in energy use. Probe International has campaigned intensively against the Three Gorges Dam.

"Projects like this can only go ahead as long as it's governed by propaganda, as long as the proponents don't have to be accountable, for example, to taxpayers, independent regulators or the stockmarket," she said.

"Meanwhile, what people really need is power, the ability to move back and forth on the river, and flood control."

But even Ms Dai concedes that the Three Gorges Dam has had one benefit. It has nurtured environmental awareness in a country that has traditionally valued development at any cost. Environmental reporting is becoming mainstream and government agencies are working with green groups.

But Arthur Kroeber, the managing director of Dragonomics, which advises on the Chinese economy and its growing influence, said it was unrealistic to expect China to deal with its energy, environmental and transport needs without giant engineering projects. More accountability was needed, as well as better balancing of the costs and benefits of projects.

"There's too much emphasis on jumbo projects because that's what's easy for the NDRC (China's powerful National Development Reform Commission) and no one else is able to hold them accountable," he said.

Mr Kroeber said Three Gorges had not diminished China's appetite for mega projects, despite the controversy. Under way are the massive south-north water project, which will divert Yangtze River water to northern China through three 1000-kilometre canals, and the creation of China's biggest container port on the Yanshan islets, connected to Shanghai by a 32.5-kilometre sea bridge.

"In theory, these ought to be subject to greater constraints now because of environmental and energy efficiency concerns," Mr Kroeber said. "In reality, the momentum behind them is large."

Three Gorges was approved during acute power shortages in China. When it is fully operational, it will supply 85 billion kilowatts of power annually — just 2 per cent of the country's energy needs by 2010.

That is why China's hydro-electric industry has another 100 dams planned or being built, including many needed to resolve problems caused by Three Gorges. Officials are pushing ahead with plans to dam China's deepest gorge, Tiger Leaping Gorge, 1500 kilometres away, and 12 more dams on the Yangtze to support the Three Gorges.

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 18, 2006; A01

THREE GORGES DAM, China, May 17 -- After 13 years of breakneck construction that displaced more than a million villagers, China is about to pour the final concrete on an enormous dam across the mighty Yangtze River, seeking to tame the flood-prone waterway that has nurtured and tormented the Chinese people for 5,000 years.

Engineers, many of whom have spent their entire careers on the site, will gather on Saturday for a ceremony to mark their achievement: The dun-colored barrier at last has reached its full height of 606 feet and stretches 7,575 feet across the Yangtze's murky green waters in the Three Gorges area of central China's Hubei province, 600 miles southwest of Beijing.

The Three Gorges Project, with 25,000 workers and a budget of $24 billion, is China's most ambitious engineering undertaking since the Great Wall. It has replaced Brazil's Itaipu Dam as the world's largest hydroelectric and flood-control installation, Chinese officials said, with the strength to hold back more water than Lake Superior and power 26 generators to churn out 85 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity a year when the final touches are completed in 2008. Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona border, by comparison, generates more than 4 billion kilowatt-hours a year.

"This is the grandest project the Chinese people have undertaken in thousands of years," said Li Yong'an, general manager of the government's Three Gorges corporation, which runs the project under the direct leadership of Premier Wen Jiabao.

In its scope and ambition -- as well as its human costs -- the Three Gorges Project has become a symbol of China's relentless energy and determination to take its place among the world's great economic powers. At the same time, the project has demonstrated the Communist Party's willingness to sacrifice individual rights for the country's general welfare and to take high-stake risks in the name of progress.

The Chinese have long dreamed of a dam across the Yangtze to alleviate flooding and facilitate navigation. Sun Yat-sen, revered as the founder of the Chinese republic, urged construction of a dam as early as 1918. U.S. engineers suggested one right after World War II. Mao Zedong, whose Communist Party took over in 1949, wrote seven years later that "walls of stone" should rise from the river.

It was left to the present-day Communist leadership, dominated by engineers and driven to build, to put the project into motion. Li Peng, a former waterworks official, got the project off the ground in the late 1980s when he was premier. The first earth was turned in 1993 under the president at the time, Jiang Zemin, a Soviet-educated engineer. The dam's completion is now being celebrated under President Hu Jintao, who was trained as a hydraulic engineer and has adopted "scientific development" as a mantra.

But critics of the project -- they are many, in China and abroad -- have questioned whether building a giant dam is really scientific in the 21st century, when the United States and other nations are weighing the wisdom of damming their rivers. Despite the $24 billion price tag, they note, the Three Gorges Dam will produce only 2 percent of China's electricity by 2010. Moreover, environmentalists have warned that the backup of water behind the dam could end up as a giant waste-collection pool for Chongqing, China's largest urban conglomeration about 250 miles upstream.

"There are two sides to everything, and the Three Gorges Project is no exception," said Cao Guangjing, the building company's deputy manager. "But many studies, undertaken since the beginning, have shown that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages."

The government has set aside $5 billion to build sewage treatment plants around Chongqing and other upstream cities to prevent the river from turning into a cesspool, officials pointed out. Tests so far show that the water quality has not suffered, even though water has been backing up for several years, they said.

"Look at that," Feng Zhengpeng, head of hydroelectrics, told reporters walking atop the dam Wednesday as he gestured toward the river far below. "Do you think my water looks dirty?"

Li Yong'an, the dam-building company's manager, said that despite its difficulties, the project is running ahead of schedule and will solve "one of the Chinese people's most important afflictions," the flooding that has ravaged the Yangtze basin for centuries. Floods killed more than 145,000 in 1931, according to Chinese records, and another 142,000 four years later. As late as 1998, with the dam under construction, more than 2,000 were reported killed by river waters that spilled over the banks.

Now, said deputy director Cao, engineers will be able to control the flow of water during the peak flooding months of summer, letting it back up in a huge basin that will reach as far as 385 miles upstream.

To make way for the impounded water, which has risen to more than 400 feet above its natural level, at least 1,200 villages and two towns had to be moved. Displaced residents already total about 1.1 million, according to a government count. Wen, who heads the government's Committee for Construction of the Three Gorges Project, last week authorized a further rise to 470 feet next fall, which will displace another 80,000.

Zigui, a community of 60,000 people, baked under a warm sun Wednesday several thousand feet away from its former location -- now underwater. The village of Zhongbao, whose inhabitants once prospered growing oranges by the riverside, also was submerged, reduced to a reflection on the river's surface just under the dam. One city farther upstream, Fengjie, was rebuilt about 10 miles inland from its traditional riverside location, only to be moved again nearby when engineers discovered the new site was unstable.

"The displaced people problem is a big one," acknowledged Li, the manager, "and ultimately our ability to deal with it will determine whether the Three Gorges Project is successful or not."

Li said Wen's government had guaranteed that all those displaced would be compensated and provided new houses and livelihoods. But many displaced families have complained from the beginning that their compensation was siphoned off by corrupt local officials and that they cannot make a living in their new locations.

The state audit office reported as early as 1999 that millions of dollars in compensation funds were being embezzled. Scores of officials were investigated and many prosecuted, according to the official New China News Agency. But the complaints have not stopped.

Chen Qun, a disgruntled Zhongbao villager, said Wednesday that his community's 2,000 residents were promised $450 each when they had to pack and leave in 1993. So far, he said, they have received only a third of that amount and corrupt local officials have pocketed the rest.

When they heard that foreign reporters were about to visit the dam, Chen said, several villagers put up banners urging Beijing to "Punish the corrupt officials" and "Give us back our space for survival." But police jailed the activists for several hours Monday and tore down the banners, he said.