(February 23, 2001) ‘One expert, Chen Guojie of the China Academy of Sciences, has compared China’s “hydropower fever” to the rampant construction of ramshackle iron smelters during the Great Leap Forward.’

(Excerpt)

Shanghai: Most experts agree that the construction of 13 dams on the Salween, one of China’s last untouched rivers, will begin soon. The river, which emerges from the Himalayas and wriggles its way through more than a hundred kilometers of spectacular canyons, several struggling conurbations and dozens of remote rural settlements before leaving China via Yunnan Province, is regarded as a “test case” for the future development of hydropower in China, and for the much-vaunted new regulatory structure for large dams and reservoirs in the country. Although the project was suspended in 2004, powerful voices in the Chinese power industry are pushing for the go-ahead to be given. Former Three Gorges chief Lu Youmei said earlier this year that construction should start as soon as possible. Meanwhile, China’s Minister of Water Resources, Wang Shucheng, told reporters last week that four less controversial dams could be launched first, while the more contentious ones could be postponed pending further research. … The expansion of hydropower capacity has been an emotive subject in China for some time. … One expert, Chen Guojie of the China Academy of Sciences, has compared China’s “hydropower fever” to the rampant construction of ramshackle iron smelters during the Great Leap Forward, and he told Interfax that the problem is not merely confined to the damp and fertile southwest. Developers have been racing to take over the rivers of Guizhou, Guangxi, Sichuan and Yunnan in what has been described by critics as a new “enclosure” movement, but even in the achingly arid northwest, where the trickle of the Yellow River provides the only life support for thousands of poor villages, the local authorities are still approving plans to construct several massive hydroelectric plants, including what will become the river’s largest at the Laxiwa Gorge in Qinghai Province. Remote Tibet is next on the list, with the virgin Brahmaputra thought to be capable of supporting as much as 100,000 MW in capacity.

Interfax, February 23, 2001