It was meant to be among the greatest engineering feats of the era. A project to tame the Yangtze River, harnessing its hydro-electric power and irrigation potential to modernise vast tracts of rural China. A multi-billion-dollar attempt to bring the benefits of the 21st century to communities which lacked the most basic facilities, setting the seal on China’s emergence as a major modern state. Instead, the Three Gorges dam threatens to become an economic disaster and a major embarrassment to the central Government. When it began, its very name evoked such awe that anyone associated with it had instant status and power. But from the outset, there appears to have been a calamitous lack of professionalism, organisation or comprehensive checks on expenditure. Some key staff clearly lacked qualifications for their work. With such a combination of factors, the scene was set for a series of scams to test the imagination of a Hollywood scriptwriter. Details now surfacing pinpoint Jin Wenchao, boss of the development corporation, as the man behind one major scam. The full extent of his haul may never be known. But corruption on the scale of at least one billion yuan cannot exist in isolation. It required collusion in high places or officials prepared to overlook malpractice, for it to have continued undetected for about eight years. Clearly, there are other, possibly bigger, fish at the bottom of this murky pool. President Jiang Zemin has said that no matter how high the office, anyone found guilty of graft will be pursued and brought to justice. That should remove all limits from investigations into this affair even into the Ministry of State Security and the Three Gorges Project Construction Committee of the State Council if need be. The matter also raises questions about the integrity of the construction work, and whether corners have been cut on materials or engineering procedures. The truth must come out. Otherwise, breaches in the wall of the country’s development might threaten to overwhelm all China.