Witnesses to a crisis

A generation that helped build dams across China and clear its land for Mao Zedong’s revolution, has stopped to examine the environmental consequences of past actions. Highlighted in this report for the Far Eastern Economic Review, academics Lin Pei and Shen Zhaoli say a feat of social engineering unparalleled in human history and several hundred years is needed to reverse the damage done. But the report cautions, criticizing the government too harshly can lead to jail, as opponents of the country’s Three Gorges dam have discovered.

Dam wall rises over Mekong neighbours’ objections

(October 3, 2001) As dams go, the one rising across the remote gorge in Yunnan province is not large. When it is finished in December, the 30-storey wall of concrete will hold a narrow, 88km-long reservoir that will take just five days to fill. But critics worry about the Dachaoshan dam’s location on the Mekong River, a source of food and livelihood for 60 million people downstream in Southeast Asia.