Probe International

(December 22, 1995) American multinationals that want contracts to build China’s massive Three Gorges dam will try to get financing from the Canadian government through their Canadian subsidiaries if the U.S. denies them public funds, according to the president of one American company hoping to cash in on the mega-project.

(January 2, 1996) The White House has apparently distanced itself from its earlier advice to the Export-Import Bank to stay away from the Three Gorges dam in China, according to a report in the Journal of Commerce. American multinationals are now confident they will get support from the bank to help build the massive and controversial dam on China’s Yangtze River.

(February 9, 1996) Chinese officials admitted last week that the number of people who will have to be moved to make way for the colossal Three Gorges dam is higher than originally expected.

(March 26, 1996) $12.5 million Export Development Corporation loan to Chinese government makes Canadian Taxpayers financiers of world’s "riskiest and most destructive dam project ever"

(April 7, 1999) Problems associated with the Three Gorges Dam resettlement programme have become so severe that relocatees have been officially petitioning the Central government to address them. Documents obtained by International Rivers Network reveal not only rampant corruption, extortion, falsification of data and inadequate compensation levels, but also the unwillingness of project managers in the Central government to address the situation is paving the way for serious conflict.

(October 1, 1999) The resettlement of up to two million people who will be flooded out of their homes by China’s massive Three Gorges dam is in chaos, according to a Chinese sociologist.

(November 29, 1999) After thousands of years of letting their sewage flow downstream and out to sea, Chongqing and other Yangtze cities now face the prospect of it staying in the water that laps their shores. If completed as planned, the massive Three Gorges dam will slow the Yangtze river’s flow, backing up water and concentrating sewage and modern-day pollutants in its 600-kilometre reservoir. A Chinese scientist from Chongqing predicts it will be a “huge, stagnant, stinking pond.”

(December 16, 1999) Uneconomic and outmoded, the Three Gorges dam will have difficulty finding customers for its electricity in China’s rapidly modernizing electricity market, according to a new Probe International report.

(January 18, 2000) In a dramatic shift in policy, China’s central government recently announced plans to move 125,000 rural people out of the Three Gorges dam region – a departure from its original plan to resettle farmers locally by moving them uphill to new land or by providing them with new jobs in the vicinity of the dam.

(January 18, 2000) China News Agency reported on January 12 that the Three Gorges dam has cost the Chinese government $5.65 billion (all figures in U.S. dollars) since construction began in 1993.

(February 21, 2000) The Chinese corporation in charge of building the massive Three Gorges dam has already started building another giant dam on a downstream tributary and has plans for another two dams upstream.

(February 21, 2000) China’s State Auditing Administration has revealed that local officials have embezzled about $57.7 million (all figures in U.S. dollars) in Three Gorges resettlement funds. This graft represents almost 12 percent of the total $487.8 million that the central government has allocated for relocating the 1.2 million people who will be flooded out of the Three Gorges area if dam construction continues as planned.