“It is very important, and necessary, for us to listen to the critics,” Zhang Chaoran told a reporter from the China Economic Times (Zhongguo jingji shibao). “It was their different voices and views that enabled us to take a scientific approach in the feasibility study and to improve the construction of the dam,” the newspaper quoted Mr. Zhang as saying in a Nov. 29 report.

While the construction team should be applauded for its successful blocking of the diversion channel at the dam site on Nov. 6, “we should never forget the critics and opponents of the project,” the newspaper said. “With the same patriotic fervour, they have voiced opposing views that are crucial in seeking solutions to vexing technical problems.”

The Three Gorges project shows just how far China has come in terms of “political democracy,” the newspaper said. “People are allowed to speak their minds and even to engage in heated debate about the Three Gorges dam. ” One such example is Prof. Huang Wanli, an opponent of the Three Gorges project who died in 2001. Mr. Zhang said: ‘Prof. Huang was my teacher when I was at Qinghua University. As his student, I was a great admirer of Prof. Huang, particularly his wonderful personality and profound scholarship.'”

The newspaper neglected to mention that Mr. Huang was sentenced to years of hard labour and sidelined within his field because of his opposition to big dams, notably Sanmenxia on the Yellow River and Three Gorges on the Yangtze.

The paper also failed to note that China’s official media is restricted to running positive stories about the Three Gorges project, that scientists cannot get their “opposing views” on the dam published in China, and that books on the Three Gorges project by another prominent critic, journalist Dai Qing, are banned.

“We are proud of the Three Gorges and all who have helped to build the project,” the newspaper said. “We believe that the names of the Three Gorges’ critics will also be carved on the monument commemorating the construction of the dam. Along with the planners and builders of the project, the opponents of the dam will be recorded in the annals of national history and remembered forever by the Chinese people.”

Meanwhile, an editorial in the Economic Observer (Jingji cankao bao) on Nov. 4 also hailed Huang Wanli as one of China’s “great scientists.”

When Mr. Huang became concerned in the mid-1950s about the plan to build the Sanmenxia dam, he took great risks in making his views known, the newspaper said. ‘Unfortunately, nobody paid any attention to his advice. Even more tragically, he was labelled a rightist for expressing his critical opinions.”

Mr. Huang warned of the danger of sediment piling up behind the dam, which, against his advice, was built without silt-discharging tubes and sluice gates. “Within two years, all his predictions about Sanmenxia proved accurate: About five billion tons of sediment accumulated in the reservoir, and the ancient city and capital of Shaanxi province, Xian, was threatened by severe flooding. As a result, the government was forced to revise its original designs for Sanmenxia, even though hundreds of millions of dollars had already been spent,” the newspaper said.

After Mr. Huang died last year of the cancer he had been battling for 17 years, many people were disappointed that only two publications in China — the Guangzhou-based South Weekend (Nanfang zhoumo) and Beijing-based Reading Books (Dushu) — carried obituaries of one of the country’s leading scientists, the Economic Observer said.

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