Editor’s note: China’s Ministry of Water Resources acknowledged last week that the silt-clogged Sanmenxia reservoir on the Yellow River was responsible for disastrous flooding last summer that killed scores of people and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes. As pressure builds for that dam to be shut down, Three Gorges Probe is making available for the first time online an excerpt from Dai Qing’s 1998 book The River Dragon Has Come! that looks at the worrying similarities between the Sanmenxia and Three Gorges dams. The problems that beset Sanmenxia ‘will undoubtedly afflict the Three Gorges,’ the writer concludes.

The Three Gate Gorge (Sanmenxia) dam on the Yellow River

The Three Gate Gorge [Sanmenxia] and Three Gorges Dams
(excerpt from The River Dragon Has Come!, compiled by Dai Qing)

In November 1994, the Three Gorges dam on the Yangtze River was officially launched – thirty-seven years after the Three Gate Gorge [Sanmenxia] dam had been started. What are the similarities between the two dams?

Both structures are on the mainstreams of the most important rivers in China. Both are record-breaking, large-scale projects designed to control floods downstream. Both are said to provide “huge economic benefits” through electricity generation: Originally, it was claimed that the Three Gate Gorge dam would fulfill one-third of the country’s electricity needs, and now it is said that the Three Gorges dam will provide one-tenth of the national supply. Both dams are supposed to facilitate navigation on their rivers. Both projects require submerging vast tracts of farmland and relocating large numbers of people: 410,000 in the case of the Three Gate Gorge and 1,200,000 in the case of the Three Gorges. The Three Gate Gorge dam destroyed 1,000-year-old cultural relics and antiquities from the civilization of central China. The Three Gorges dam will destroy relics from an even earlier period, the Ba culture.

In both cases, provinces in the upper reaches of the two rivers suffered: Shaanxi in the Three Gate Gorge and Sichuan for the Three Gorges. Representatives from Sichuan pleaded to the government just like their counterparts in Shaanxi, but in both cases their opinions were systematically ignored. Both projects faced similar sediment problems. In the case of the Three Gate Gorge, sediment threatened the city of Xi’an while sediment trapped in the Three Gorges reservoir will threaten Chongqing. Both cities are provincial capitals and important industrial cities. Catchy slogans have been created to help deal with the dams’ respective sediment problems – “soil conservation” was the clarion call of the Three Gate Gorge, just as “store clean water and flush out sediment” is the proposed solution for the Three Gorges.

Both projects chose to gradually increase the normal pool level and resettle people at different stages. The failures that beset the Three Gate Gorge in this regard will undoubtedly afflict the Three Gorges.

The Three Gorges (Sanxia) dam on the Yangtze River

Both dams provoked intense debate, and in both cases minority opinions were censored and slandered. Both dams became the “concern” (guanxin) of the top leadership – Mao Zedong for the Three Gate Gorge and Deng Xiaoping for the Three Gorges. In each case, it was this “concern” that served as the primary force pushing the project forward.

Authorities claimed that both projects were “demanded by the people” because they were approved by the National People’s Congress. And both were funded by the state as part of the planned economy. As a result, no matter how large the disaster, no one will have to take personal responsibility for their failures.

The potential social and political impacts of both projects were ignored. In each case, the head engineers (Wang Huayun for the Three Gate Gorge project and Lin Yishan for the Three Gorges) were the Party’s “red specialists.” Because of their red backgrounds, they feared nothing. Both were blindly confident and pursued the vanity of dictatorship.

In both cases, the dam’s opponents – Wen Shanzhang in the case of the Three Gate Gorge and Huang Wanli in both cases – proposed smaller dams as the most rational alternative to large-scale dams and giant reservoirs. Huang’s predictions for the Three Gate Gorge dam all came true. For the Three Gorges project he cautioned that it is absurd to build a dam on the mainstream of such a sediment-laden river. He also warned the authorities not to ignore local interests. Let’s not forget that it was the Railroad Protection Movement in Sichuan Province that triggered the 1912 Republican revolution.

The Three Gate Gorge dam now has to be operated according to Wen Shanzhang’s original instructions from 1957. What will happen in the case of the Three Gorges?

Huang Wanli, who has now passed away, will never see the Yangtze River blocked up. But what about Wen Shanzhang? Will he one day be forced to write the book on what went wrong with the Three Gorges dam project?

Shang Wei, The River Dragon Has Come!, February 12, 2004

This excerpt is from “A Lamentation for the Yellow River,” a chapter in The River Dragon Has Come! , compiled by Dai Qing and published by M.E. Sharpe (New York, 1998).