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China begins building world's largest dam
November 8, 1997
Web posted at: 11:46 a.m. EST (1646 GMT)YICHANG, China (CNN) -- Chinese President Jiang Zemin led a celebration honoring the beginning of the building of the world's largest dam as workers began sealing off a dike to divert the Yangtze River.
China's engineers will now begin erecting a permanent wall, nearly 600-feet high, to harness the Yangtze, the world's third-longest river, and provide a huge source of hydropower for the world's most populous nation.
For China's leaders, the event is the realization of a dream dating back to 1919, when revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen first proposed building the dam.
China begins building world's largest dam
"The age-old dream of the Chinese people to develop and utilize the resources of the Three Gorges section of the Yangtze has come closer to being true," Jiang told the crowd of 5,000 who came Saturday to celebrate the official kickoff of the dam's construction. "The diversion of the Yangtze is a great moment in the modernization of our country."
When the dam is complete, it will be capable of pumping out 18,200 megawatts of electricity from 26 generators, each equal to a medium-sized nuclear reactor.
The price of progress
The building of the Three Gorges Dam, in Hubei province, is modern China's most ambitious construction project, and one of the most controversial in the world. It is also China's largest construction project since the building of the Grand Canal in the 10th century.
From start to finish, the project will cost up to $29 billion. More than one million people will be relocated -- 100,000 of them by the end of this year.
When the towering 1.2-mile wide wall is complete, in 2009, it will be used for the metamorphosis of one of China's most scenic and most pristine landscapes.
The result will be a 370-mile-long lake that will consume 19 counties, 153 towns, 4,500 villages, and the scenic canyons that have inspired poets and painters for centuries.
Communist China's founding father, the late Mao Tse-tung, once wrote a poem in which he dreamed of "walls of stone" to hold back "clouds and rain till a smooth lake rises in the narrow gorges."
Environmentalists say the rising water will doom migratory fish, eradicate rare plants and create water pollution. China says harnessing the river will control flooding and provide much-needed power.
Powerful divisions
"This great event proves that only socialism has the virtues to concentrate power to deal with this great project," Jiang boasted to the river crowd. But as the Western-leaning communist touted the virtues of socialism, he thanked the world's capitalist investors who will be helping to complete the project on time. "We should bring the initiatives of those foreign-funded enterprises into play and make use of their advantage in capital and technology."
But China won't be counting on help from the United States. The U.S. withdrew its technical support in 1993 because of doubts about the dam's effectiveness in flood control and environmental concerns about the project.
Critics say China could minimize its costs and the project's disruption by choosing instead to fortify existing dikes and to build smaller dams upstream. That would enable engineers to control flooding while increasing China's capability of drawing hydropower, critics say.
There is also concern that the giant lake will become a cesspool as one billion tons of industrial and human waste are projected to flow into the reservoir.
Chinese leaders insist the damage to the environment will be minimal and the disruption to the lives of the 1.2 million people who are being forced to move will be small.
Speaking to the river crowd on Saturday, Jiang tried to reassure the families who will be moved, telling them their relocation is the "highest priority to the success of the Three Gorges Dam."
Only the Nile and the Amazon rivers are longer than the Yangtze.
Correspondent Rebecca MacKinnon, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Related sites:
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- China Three Gorges Project - Official Site
- Three Gorges Tour
- Three Gorges Campaign - International Rivers Network
- Three Gorges Dam: Technological Advance or Environmental Decline?
External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.
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