Sold down the river

Taming China’s longest river has been the dream of emperors and dictators for centuries. The first water diversion works on the Yangtze were built during the Han Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago and the Three Gorges dam was first proposed by Sun Yat-sen, the revolutionary father of modern China, nearly 100 years ago as a way to mitigate the river’s frequent and devastating floods. The project was championed by Mao Zedong in the 1950s but decades of disastrous political blunders and fierce domestic opposition meant it would take another 50 years and the crushing of a nascent democracy movement before Mao’s dream of building the world’s largest hydropower station could be realised.

When the river’s flow was cut and the Three Gorges reservoir filled in 2003, the Chinese government hailed the project as an engineering marvel that would boost the region’s economy, improve the environment and raise living standards for the 1.3m forced from their homes to make way for the rising water.

But in recent months, senior officials have publicly admitted for the first time the Three Gorges region faces an environmental catastrophe if urgent action is not taken. In interviews they have also acknowledged that rising discontent among the dam’s refugees will be resolved only with huge new investment. In mid-October the Financial Times travelled the length of the reservoir and spoke to numerous officials and residents to check on reports of an environmental and humanitarian disaster in the making.
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