Big Dams: The Three Gorges Project (Chapter 9)

Big Dams: The Three Gorges Project (Chapter 9) Return to Unit List

China has the world’s greatest resources for the generation of hydroelectric power (HEP); yet in 1994 only 19% of China’s commercial electricity came from HEP. The Changjiang (Yangtze River) watershed is where much of this HEP potential is located. The Changjiang is the third longest river in the world, the sixth largest river in volume, and flows rapidly off the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau through narrow canyons. These canyons offer many ideal sites for HEP development.

The last of the gorges through which the Changjiang flows is the San Xia, the famous "Three Gorges" of the Yangtze. Since 1920, China’s leaders have envisioned a massive dam in the Three Gorges. In 1992, the dam was finally approved, and despite an unprecedented amount of protest within China, construction began in 1994. The dam was operational by the end of 2003, with three of the eventual 26 generating turbines operating and the reservoir being filled to about one-third of its eventual maximum level. Full-capacity operation is not expected until 2009.

The Three Gorges Dam is the largest dam in the world, with a generating capacity of between 17,000 and 18,000 megawatts, or nearly three times the capacity of the largest U.S. power-generating dam, Grand Coulee.

The reservoir will ultimately be over 600-km long (but seldom more than 2-km wide), and will submerge 19 cities and 326 towns, along with over 30,000 hectares of arable land. By the end of 2004, nearly 1 million people had already been resettled, with plans for another 350,000 to be settled between 2004 and 2009.

The Three Gorges Project (TGP) has been controversial both within and beyond China. A basic introduction to the project and the controversy surrounding it can be found at the PBS site for the film, Great Wall Across the Yangtze.

The government’s arguments for building the dam are summarized on this China Online Web page.

What are the main arguments for building the Three Gorges Dam?

How much of China’s energy needs will the TGP be able to provide?

What are some of the environmental benefits of the TGP, according to the Chinese government?

What are some of the economic and social benefits of the TGP, according to the Chinese government?

Now consider a number of Web sites devoted to opposing the TGP:

Probe International’s Three Gorges Probe, which continues to monitor dam construction and protest activity within China

The International Rivers Network’s Three Gorges Page

After exploring these sites, answer these questions:

What are the main arguments against the dam? What continue to be the major concerns now that the dam is close to completion and the reservoir is already partially filled?
Do you think the arguments for the dam outweigh those against it? In answering this question, it might help to make a table with lists comparing pro and con arguments specifically.
If you think that the arguments against the TGP outweigh those in favor of it, what do you think an alternative solution to China’s flooding, energy, and modernization difficulties should be?
Do you think that international organizations like Probe International and the International Rivers Network have any business telling China what to do with its rivers?

Now it may be useful to think about the TGP from a broader context. Chapters 3 and 8 also have units on Big Dam development (in Brazil and India). How are these similar or different with China’s TGP? Both the Brazil and India projects mentioned in these units were initially funded by the World Bank. Yet, partly due to the Bank’s experience with these specific projects, it no longer actively promotes the construction of large dams. The World Bank, for instance, is not involved in financing China’s TGP. In 1994, the Bank conducted an internal audit and found that 15 percent of its lending between 1986 and 1993 went to dam projects that forcibly displaced some 2 million people. The Bank subsequently cancelled 22 of those projects, and has been reluctant to continue financing big dams.

Large multilateral development institutions, such as the World Bank, are increasingly willing to view big dam projects as cases of unsustainable development.
Largely because of the World Bank’s experience with the Sardar Sarovar Project in India, it increasingly evaluates the social and environmental impacts of dams as much as the potential benefits in terms of energy production and water conservation.
Given these concerns, the World Bank has steered clear of China’s TGP.
Who, then, is paying for theTGP? According to China Daily Business Weekly, there are 5 main sources of funding. They make clear that China is largely financing the dam on its own:

The Three Gorges Dam Construction Fund
Revenue from Gezhouba Power Plant
Policy loans from the China Development Bank
Loans from domestic and foreign commercial banks
Corporate bonds

The first of these, the Three Gorges Dam Construction Fund, receives its operating revenue from special electricity sales taxes created to finance the early stages of the dam. Foreign financing comes by means of foreign commercial bank loans (#4) and foreign bank underwriting of China’s domestic bank loans (#3). However, as indicated in a 2003 report by CFO Asia, the dam is facing financing troubles.

Do you feel that the high costs of the TGP and the difficulties China faces in paying for it (both financially and in terms of the projects’ social costs) are a necessary sacrifice in pursuit of modernization and development?
Is it fair for U.S. citizens to criticize China for building large dams when almost all major U.S. rivers are themselves heavily dammed? How do you think the United States would have responded if China had criticized the building of Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, or Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River?

Finally, the progress of the resettlement and reservoir inundation has been the subject of numerous online photo galleries, some of which are included on the IRN and Probe International pages above. An additional gallery of photographs by Ben Sandler can be found at Holding Ground Under Water. Another photo gallery can be found at The Guardian’s Three Gorges page, which also features an article by Jonathan Watts on the impacts of the dam as of late 2003. Watts begins his article by asking, now that the dam is actually operational, whether or not the project’s critics were right in their warnings about the negative consequences. What conclusions does Watts draw? What are your conclusions?