Geologists predict more frequent catastrophes in China’s Three Gorges Dam region, after landslides wipe out a hydropower plant. Fan Xiao and Yang Yong, the authors of several reports for Probe International, speak to thethirdpole.net about a disaster-prone region made more perilous by intensive hydropower development and call for new risk assessments to be carried out.
Zeng Jinyan, the wife of Hu Jia, one of China’s best-known human rights activists, shares her personal experience of the high cost of political expression in China.
If the findings of Chinese geologist and environmentalist Fan Xiao – and the author of several reports for Probe International – are accurate, they raise a serious question. This report by Quartz, a business news site from Atlantic Media, looks at some recent quakes in China linked to the filling of hydro-dam reservoirs.
The environmental awareness of Chinese people has changed dramatically in the 25 years since her path-breaking book, Yangtze! Yangtze! on the environmental and social effects of China’s Three Gorges Dam, was published. Now, renowned journalist, author, activist and Probe International Fellow and correspondent, Dai Qing, sits down with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) for a look back on her experiences as a veteran reporter and the lessons of value she has learned along the way.
The 6.5-magnitude earthquake that devastated southwestern China’s Yunnan Province on August 3 and killed nearly 600 is linked to the world’s largest and most intensive dam-building scheme on the Jinsha River, says renowned, independent geologist-explorer, Yang Yong.
“Why do earthquakes keep happening in that area?” In the wake of China’s 6.1 magnitude quake in Yunnan Province and a number of smaller quakes in the region, questions are once again being asked about the country’s rush to build big dams in its southwestern mountains, an area already vulnerable to seismic hazard.
A mind-boggling new twist on the road to urbanization.
(June 4, 2014) On the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown today, we recommend a visit to the Twitter page of Patrick Chovanec and the tremendous photographs he has posted commemorating the events of June 4, 1989. Patrick is an adjunct professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a former business professor at Tsinghua
(May 27, 2014) Another excellent entry in a growing number of critiques examining China’s South-to-North Water Diversion project and the controversial geo-engineering giant’s large-scale problems.
(April 16, 2014) Working Canadians are placing a bet on the Chinese real estate market thanks to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board that invests their obligatory pension contributions globally.
(March 19, 2014) A corruption scandal in China involving the country’s largest, state-backed oil companies has some analysts talking about a “buying opportunity”, but investors would be right to proceed with caution.
(March 17, 2014) Part two of Lily Kuo’s substantial overview of China’s South-to-North Water Diversion project (SNWDP) and its resettlement process. Kuo notes that since 1949, more than 45 million Chinese have been displaced by infrastructure projects and, of those, 12 million have been moved for water schemes. The water projects, she notes, have a particularly depressing record in terms of outcomes for the resettled. Although there are signs, she says, of villagers moved for the SNWDP receiving better care than those in the past, the same old resettlement problems abound. Worst of all, there are no farms to tend and jobs to do. “This isn’t a life,” says one migrant of the soul-destroying joblessness. “In the morning, you see everyone sleeps in. In the afternoon, they play cards. That’s it.”
(March 4, 2014) With China’s economy operating under perverse incentives, China’s leaders, now assembled in Beijing, will be powerless to clean up its environment.
(December 24, 2013) As Europe’s carbon market crumbles, China decides it’s time to set one up. On a side note, this has crazy corruption written all over it!
(December 10, 2013) Bankruptcies abound as China’s central planners struggle to keep its green industry from rotting.
Patricia Adams
Dai Qing
Fan Xiao
Lawrence Solomon
Mu Lan
Probe International
Lisa Peryman
Probe Media
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