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After nearly 70 years of indecision, China has decided to build the
world’s largest dam, across the Yangtze River.

A summer of floods and the continuing ascendancy of Marxist planners
in Beijing have combined to defeat objectors to the scheme.

An early start to the Three Gorges Dam is now seen as ‘inevitable’ in
order to control flooding in central and eastern China, according to a report
by the Minister of Water Conservancy, Yang Zhenhuai. Last month he presented
the report to a committee of China’s nominal parliament, the National People’s
Congress. It won the backing of congress chairman Wan Li, who called for
the dam’s construction to be included in China’s next 10-year development
plan, which begins this year.

China’s cabinet, the State Council, is expected to give the go-ahead
to start construction later this year. Once approved, the decision is certain
to be rubber-stamped by the congress next spring.

The dam will create a lake nearly twice the area of the Isle of Wight.
It is known to be the pet project of the Chinese premier, Li Peng, who was
trained as an engineer.

This summer’s floods along the Huai River – a tributary of the Yangtze
– and around Tai Lake were reportedly the worst this century. In July, water
covered more than 20 million hectares of farmland – an area close to that
of England and Scotland combined. More than 2000 people died and a million
were made homeless.

Hardline Communist leaders have used the crisis to justify centralised
control. Flood management has been given high priority within the new development
plan. The New China News Agency says some £24 billion will be available
for dams, dykes and irrigation through the 1990s. At least 10 dams are planned
to harness China’s major rivers, including the Yellow River, the Pearl River,
the Min Jiang and the Li Shui.

The Three Gorges Dam is the centrepiece of plans to control flooding
along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze. Its 26 generating units
will produce 84 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, equivalent
to one-sixth of China’s electricity output.

Planners have blamed flooding and poor agricultural production on the
failure to push ahead with large water projects. Causes such as deforestation
along the upper reaches of the Yangtze and in Tibet have largely been ignored.

Opposition to the project from scientists and environmentalists has
been quashed by the political crackdown that began in Tiananmen Square.
Among the most prominent opponents of the scheme was the journalist Dai
Qing, who was jailed for 11 months for her support of the 1989 student movement.
Opponents warned that the project will be an environmental disaster, upsetting
the ecological balance in the Yangtze gorges – one of China’s most famous
areas of natural beauty.

The project will require up to 1.7 million people to be resettled and
the cost of building it is expected to be £6.6 billion.