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Mao Zedong 1956

By Jack Souther At Sandouping, a few kilometres upstream from the city of Yichang, we pulled into a viewpoint for our first look at the Three Gorges Dam. Stretching almost 2.

By Jack Souther

At Sandouping, a few kilometres upstream from the city of Yichang, we pulled into a viewpoint for our first look at the Three Gorges Dam. Stretching almost 2.5 km across the Yangtze and towering 185 metres above the torrent of muddy water gushing from its flood gates, the Three Gorges Dam dwarfs the men and machines still working on it. It won't be finished for another two years but the tourist facilities are already in place. Parking lots are paved, walkways wind through landscaped gardens to viewpoints, and a large-scale model of the project is displayed in the visitor centre.

We began our trip up the Yangtze in Wuhan, a city of eight million that sits astride the river 350 km downstream from the Three Gorges Dam. From there we drove north to Yichang. At first the air is thick with pollution from Wuhan's massive industrial outskirts where factories and warehouses bear familiar names: Volkswagen, Chrysler, Jeep, Nissan, Coke — companies that are cashing in on China's vast pool of cheap labour and coal-fired energy. A few miles out of the city the sprawling factories give way to clusters of two- and three-rise apartment buildings, the homes of farmers who own and till the surrounding land. The countryside is lush, green and flat — a maze of fields, levees, irrigation ditches, and carp ponds. In one field a farmer guides his plow behind a plodding water buffalo, in another a group of women with reed baskets are picking cotton, and in one of the carp ponds a fish-farmer balances on a tiny bamboo raft. In the distance we can see huge fields of grain. This is one of the most productive food-producing areas in China. The rich alluvial soil from the Yangtze can produce two crops per year, but for generations the river has also threatened to destroy both the crops and those who farm them.

The Yangtze is the third longest river on earth. From its headwaters at 16,000 feet on the Tibetan Plateau the river makes a great loop through western China before turning east and churning through the Three Gorges. Beyond the shoals and rapids of the Gorges it winds through the fertile farmland of the lower Yangtze Basin before spilling into the East China Sea near Shanghai. For hundreds of years it has been a transportation corridor through central China — a link between the eastern and western parts of the country and a gateway between the land and the sea. Large boats could navigate as far inland as Wuhan, a thousand kilometres up-river from the ocean, and smaller boats, with the help of trackers to drag them through the shoals, were able to make it another 1,500 km upstream. For the people of the Yangtze Basin the River was both friend and foe — the source of life-giving water and devastating floods.

When the monsoon brings torrential rains to its vast watershed the Yangtze can swell to more than double its size. The 200 km stretch through the Three Gorges became a raging torrent where trackers were unable to haul boats upstream against the current. Below the Gorges the silt-laden flood water often spilled out across the lowlands, covering thousands of square kilometres of farm land, annihilating whole villages, and carving a path of death and destruction through one of the most densely populated regions on earth. And after each flood the dream of someday taming the mighty Yangtze was renewed among those who survived.

The idea of damming the Yangtze to control its violent moods goes back centuries but it was Sun Yatsen, in his 1919 "constructive strategy", who first proposed placing a dam in the Three Gorges. Thirty-seven years later, after 30,000 people were killed in the disastrous 1954 floods, Mao Zedong called in Russian engineers to help design a dam on the Yangtze. A site was selected and in 1994 construction of the Three Gorges dam was begun. When completed in 2009 it will be the largest, and most expensive, project of its kind ever built.

Our tour of the nearly finished dam took us to the five-stage ship lock, the ship elevator, and viewpoints of its 23 floodgates and two huge powerhouses. Although flood-control was and is the primary reason for building the dam our local guide was quick to point out its other benefits. "The treacherous waters of the Three Gorges will become a tranquil lake" he enthused "ocean-going ships can pass through the dam's locks and steam 1,500 km inland, all the way to Chongqing. Tourists can enjoy the ‘mirror-like lake’ envisioned by Chairman Mao and marvel at the 1,000 metre splendor of Goddess Peak from the comfort and luxury of a cruise ship. As well," he reminded us, "the dam's 26 turbines will produce   an astonishing 18,200 megawatts of electricity — enough green energy in one year to equal the burning of 50 million tons of coal." But all this comes at a cost — a detail that our guide chose to avoid.

As global warming and deforestation threaten to increase the size and frequency of major floods there was clearly a need to protect the lower Yangtze Basin. The question posed by critics is whether building the world’s largest dam was the best way to provide that protection. The result is an epic show of China's technical prowess and a source of great national pride. But the economic and social costs have been enormous.

Construction costs have spiraled way beyond the initial estimate of US$25 billion, according to some estimates to more than three times that amount. The dam will back up the river for almost 600 km, creating a reservoir the size of Lake Superior. More than 600 square kilometres of farmland, orchards, and forest will disappear below the water, along with hundreds of towns and villages.

Somewhere between one and two million people will be evacuated and resettled in new communities built above the high-water line. My official booklet, purchased at the visitors centre, claims the new settlements will provide "noticeable improvement in living quality" but it is unclear how the displaced farmers and fishermen will support themselves. Nor is there a satisfactory answer to fears of siltation and pollution of the reservoir.

The Chinese have made some difficult choices in balancing the benefits and costs of their struggle with the Yangtze. The risk of flooding has been greatly reduced for the 400 million people living and farming downstream from the new dam but for those living above it the benefits are less clear. As we boarded the East King and set out for a five-day cruise on Mao's “mirror-like lake” through the Three Gorges I looked forward to seeing for myself what lies upstream from the world's largest dam.