The most important news from China in decades was conveyed by official statements on September 26th. These statements described the effects of the much-lauded and just-completed Three Gorges Dam as a possible environmental “catastrophe.” Such candor marks a dramatic reversal of the long-running campaign of celebrating this dam, which stands at the point where the Yangtze River spills from the highlands of Sichuan into the China plain, as a triumph of engineering and marvel of the world, as a new Great Wall.

The worst news is about pollution. Immense quantities of waste—ranging from simple sewage to high-nitrogen fertilizer runoff, paper and chemical plant waste, non-biodegradable organic phosphorus pesticides, toxic metals, and even radioactive isotopes discarded by hospitals—are poured into Chinese waterways every day. Much water in China is already so toxic that it cannot be used even for irrigation. The building of the dam and the consequent slowing of the Yangtze mean that its waste is no longer even flushed out to sea, as in the past. Furthermore, the weight of water in the four-hundred-mile-long reservoir created by the dam is causing landslides. Because the river’s previously rapid rate of flow above the dam has been stopped, huge amounts of silt are clogging the reservoir and navigation channels. Below the dam, water is less abundant, but its fast flow, now that it is free of silt, is causing erosion.

This is a political as well as an environmental disaster. The decision to build the dam was made despotically by the highest party officials, against strong opposition and without serious consultation. More than a million people were displaced by its construction. One of the most beautiful natural sites in China, the three gorges of the Yangtze, was submerged, along with countless towns, homes, and cultural treasures. That was the price, the leaders said, for scientifically regulating the country’s greatest river, and generating vast quantities of hydropower.

Now it turns out that China’s rulers have been not only despotic but also incompetent. The all-knowing Party has made an immense error with incalculable environmental and social consequences, and its leaders are clearly frightened. None of their coping mechanisms can deal with it. The dam disaster cannot be arrested like a dissident, or imprisoned or executed; it cannot be censored away; it cannot be fixed with foreign help and half-measures. No order from the Politburo can halt the unfolding disaster. One thinks of the nuclear plant disaster at Chernobyl.

In times of flood, Chinese today regularly allude to the legendary sage-king Yu who is venerated for having “tamed the waters” more than four thousand years ago. Since ancient times, water control has been one of the supreme tests of the legitimacy of Chinese leadership. It’s a test that that leadership is failing now, with disastrous consequences.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/contentions/index.php/waldron/1003