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Yangtze River - 1995

Yangtze River - 1995

Jacek Pałkiewicz
2006-06-18 21:30:25

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growing cities.
But critics question whether both effects can be achieved at the same time. Flood control requires the reservoir maintain low levels of water to allow for the inflow of flood waters, while power generation requires high levels of water in the reservoir. In addition, critics doubt that the human and cultural losses are worth the projected benefit, and they say both flood management and power generation could be achieved by faster, less expensive means. When the dam becomes operational, over a million people will have been relocated, over a thousand archeological sites will be submerged beneath the reservoir, and endangered species may be driven to extinction.

Regardless of the differing perspectives, everyone agrees that the Three Gorges Dam is an incredible undertaking. Like China's Great Wall, it will be one of the few man-made structures visible from space. The Chinese government and the dam's engineers view the project as a symbol of national pride, proving China's participation in new global markets.

Monumental works of civil engineering undertaken by Chinese emperors, often at the cost of tens of thousands of lives, are strewn across China's landscape and history alike. The Qin organized the Great Wall and the Ming re-routed it and clad thousands of kilometres with stone, the Sui built the great canal network of the Imperial Highway, and various emperors constructed labyrinthine palaces and vast mausoleums, principal tourist attractions today.

China's modern leaders have not been slow to conceive super-projects of their own, although cement has replaced stone, and the raw muscle power of thesurpIus agricultural laborers known as the 'army of sticks' has been partly supplemented by machines. The greatest of these projects is undoubtedly the new San Xia (Three Gorges) Dam, a 17--year, US$70 billion operation involving the transportation of more than ten billion cubic metres (350 ...