Three Gorges Dam crisis in slow motion

[xchrom]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/MF11Ad01.html

Dams are big and stupid things. The Three Gorges Dam on China's Yangtze River is bigger and stupider than most, so it attracts a lot of criticism. Much of the criticism is deserved. Some of it - such as accusations that it has significantly exacerbated the drought gripping China - is, perhaps, undeserved.

All of the criticism, however, is an important harbinger of mounting political problems for China's authoritarian model of national development.

The Three Gorges Dam, or TGD, is very much the bastard child of the Tiananmen democratic movement of 1989 and the ensuing crackdown.

Popular activists, led by author Dai Qing, tried to stop the dam in


the name of transparency, accountability and democracy. After Tiananmen, the Chinese government built and promoted the dam as a symbol of the government's determination to pursue economic development over political reform and in the teeth of international economic sanctions.