Newsweek
April 5, 2006

Dams are not the only massive infrastructure projects beloved by Beijing. China’s leadership has hatched several grand schemes, partly this reflects the impatience of a nation barreling toward the developed world.

But another part may have to do with who’s ordering up these boondoggles: six of the seven members of the Politburo standing committee—the most powerful people in the country—were trained as engineers. These include President Jiang Zemin and his handpicked successor, Hu Jintao, as well as reformist Prime Minister Zhu Rongji and his conservative predecessor Li Peng. If Mao’s lieutenants strove to “bombard the headquarters,” this new breed aspires to build the joint. “Their emphasis is on making things operational,” says Italian economist Fiorella Kostoris Padoa Schioppa. “The question being asked is not why, but rather how.” The leadership’s “edifice complex” may be only natural for a nation that prides itself on having built the Great Wall. But the philosophy is ill suited to many problems facing modern China. The water pipeline, for instance, would require pumping 50 billion cubic meters of water through at least seven provinces, while many experts say the focus should instead be put on conserving water in northern cities. “Beijing uses 900,000 tons of water a year, but 118,000 tons of that is simply wasted—including through leaking faucets,” says Liu Changming, a professor with the Chinese Academy of Science. Paradoxically, former U.S. ambassador James Lilley says that their mind-set “also makes Chinese leaders easier to deal with because they have a predictable, problem-solving mentality.” Optimists hope that means Beijing will move naturally toward a more open political system. “Eventually it will become obvious to the leadership that China should move in the direction of a civil society, legal reforms and democratization—because that’s what works,” says Lilley. For now that sounds like wishful thinking. Authorities built China’s Mekong dams, for instance, in part to relieve poverty. Unless China’s neighbors elevate their environmental concerns to the level of a diplomatic fuss, Beijing will keep regarding the Mekong dams as part of the solution—and not the problem itself.