Taming the river dragon: can China's Three Gorges Dam harness the Yangtze River? - Special Report

0 Comments | Current Events, March 15, 2002

At least that's what China's government hopes the Three Gorges Dam will do when completed. But many critics, both inside and outside China, don't think that's what will happen. Critics say that, at best, the Three Gorges Dam will be a mistake and, at worst, a disaster. Not only will the dam not improve China's economy, they say, but it will result in a human, cultural, and environmental disaster.

The dam will create a huge reservoir, or artificial lake, 370 miles long and up to 525 feet deep. The lake will swallow up canyons, hills, 13 cities, and more than 1,300 villages. Many famous sites will disappear below the water, including Fengdu, the "City of Ghosts." According to popular belief, the souls of the world's dead cross over a suspension bridge in the hills above Fengdu to a temple, where they are judged and sent either to heaven or to hell. The bridge will survive, but the entire city of Fengdu below it will be at the bottom of the reservoir.

At rough estimates, the reservoir will also take as much as 240,000 acres of cropland out of production, including many orange groves.

Moving People

The Chinese government expects to relocate an estimated 1 million to 2 million people to new cities and towns built above the reservoir's waterline. Traditional Chinese culture places great importance on land and on a spiritual sense of the place where one's ancestors are buried. Thus, for many people, leaving an ancestral village is like tearing a tree up by its roots. Officials regret what must be done but say that those who must move will be well looked after.

Critics also charge that the reservoir will quickly fill with silt, chemicals, and pollutants. An annual flow of a quarter-trillion gallons of raw sewage, they say, together with the wastes from abandoned, drowned factories, will kill fish and other animals and turn the reservoir into an open sewer the length of Lake Superior. One Chinese scientist, Chen Guopjie, said that the reservoir would end up as a "huge, stagnant, stinking pond."

Round-the-Clock Digs

Archaeologists are working at round-the-clock rescue efforts to save artifacts from China's ancient civilization before the waters cover them forever. More than 1,200 known but untapped archaeological sites--tombs, temples, relics, and ruins that hold clues to China's ancient civilization--lie in the area of the reservoir. Scientists estimate they can save only about 10 percent of the sites before the dam is finished.

Archaeologists estimate that an additional 8,000 unknown and unexcavated sites may be lost forever in a watery tomb. A few above-ground treasures, such as the Zhang Fei Temple, will be relocated. Plans also call for moving hundreds of old stone bridges, pagodas, and temples. It is the biggest historical salvage job in history.

Of particular interest are artifacts and sites relating to a mysterious people called the Ba, defeated by Chinese imperial armies more than 2,000 years ago. Archaeologists had hoped to solve the riddle of how the Ba built their boat-shaped coffins--coffins that still hang high in the gorges of Yangtze tributaries--and learn the truth about ancient legends that they sacrificed humans to tigers. But, say critics, the reservoir may ensure that the Ba remain a mystery forever.