China's Three Gorges Dam - a magnet for controversy
Posted: Thursday, December 06, 2007 8:58 AM
Filed Under:
Beijing, China
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
THREE GORGES DAM, Hubei Province, China – It was correspondent Mark Mullen who first noticed them.
"What's that?" he asked as he pointed down at two red, waxy-looking discs on the ground. A piece of paper with Chinese writing was pinned on one of them. "They're all over the place," he said.
"Dunno," I replied, befuddled by the writing. But once we became aware of them, we noticed they were everywhere.
And because of where we were standing, atop the Three Gorges Dam, their existence seemed especially baffling.
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| The Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydropower project. |
The world’s biggest dam
The world's largest hydropower project, the Three Gorges Dam in central China's Hubei province is as much an engineering feat as it is a magnet for controversy.
Measuring just as long and tall as San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge (7,575 feet long and 607 feet high), the dam is a stark example of man versus nature. It was designed to harness the world's third longest waterway, the Yangtze River (known in Chinese as Chang Jiang or the Long River).
Its delivery was a long time coming. First conceived in 1919 by China's revolutionary father, Sun Yat-sen, the hydropower scheme retained a special place in the hearts and minds of leaders who followed – particularly Mao Zedong – determined to bring a would-be superpower up to modern standards.
But it wasn't until 1992 that the Three Gorges Dam project was approved. Two years later, construction began, lasting more than a dozen years and running a total cost of $24 billion.
For the central government, completion of the dam project (slated for 2009) embodies "the comprehensive national strength of the People's Republic of China, as well as the superiority of the socialist system," according to the Three Gorges Project Committee of the State Council, an executive body in the government.
The dam project certainly demonstrates the power of the state.
The dam’s raison d’etre
Roughly a third of the nation's 1.3 billion people live in and around the Yangtze River basin. For centuries, these people led a risky lifestyle dictated by the Yangtze's tempestuous nature, namely, yearly floods.
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| The level of the Yangtze River and its tributaries since its flooding in 2003. |
So while to some, the Three Gorges Dam seems a gross and expensive example of national hubris, China's leadership has argued its existence is necessary for improving living standards, not least by controlling flooding and saving lives.
The dam scheme also promises to bolster regional economic development through enhanced shipping routes (ocean freighters can now flow the estimated 1,550 miles from Chongqing all the way to Shanghai).
Upon completion, the project is expected to generate every year 84 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity from 26 power turbines* – the equivalent, some reports say, to what can be produced by 15 to 18 nuclear plants.
The dam’s pitfalls
This source of this energy, however, has come at a price.
Between 1.2 and 1.4 million people were displaced after two cities, about a dozen counties and more than a hundred towns were submerged by the creation of the dam reservoir.
In October, China's government announced that another four million people would have to be relocated from areas near the reservoir created by the dam, although officials claimed the resettlement has nothing to do with the dam.
The environment and the river ecology have been severely disrupted. Fish and mammal species face extinction because of increased shipping traffic and water pollution coming from Chongqing's industrial belt.
And experts say the dam causes erosion, traps silt, and increases the risk of landslides. Last month, at least 35 people were killed in a landslide near the dam reservoir.
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| The Three Gorges area is prone to landslides. |
Chinese officials have responded quickly to the renewed criticisms as a result of the recent incidents by offering to take local and foreign media out to the Three Gorges.
NBC News was invited by the Chinese officials to join the trip to the dam, and having never attended one of these official press junkets, we were intrigued enough to take a closer look at Beijing's well-oiled propaganda machinery.
So it was atop the dam that Mark and I found ourselves scratching our heads over the red discs.
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| Rat poison at the Three Gorges Dam. |
What are those waxy red discs anyway?
I approached the engineer from the Three Gorges Project Development Corporation who was accompanying us.
"Huang Aiguo, what are those red round things over here?"
He walked over with me to stare at the ground. "I don't know." He picked one up and called out to a nearby cleaning lady sweeping the path. "Hey! What is this?"
"It's rat poison!" she yelled back.
Huang Aiguo immediately dropped the disc.
"Rat poison," he said, wiping his hands. Despite all of the sophisticated engineering features of the dam, the builders have resorted to a low-tech solution to keep rats from chewing into wires and cables.
"Yes, we have to be careful of rats," said Huang.
* GE Hydro is one of the companies supplying turbines to the Three Gorges Dam project. GE Hydro is owned by NBC Universal's parent company, General Electric.
