WELL, WE KNOW CHINA HAS WMD:

THREE GORGES DRAMA: Why Chinese Dam Is Forcing Yet Another Mass Exodus: Pollution, Poverty Spur Relocation of 4 Million; Death in a Demolition (SHAI OSTER, November 6, 2007, Wall Street Journal)

Fan Zhongcheng last year joined 1.4 million people forced to flee rising Yangtze River waters caused by the government's massive new Three Gorges Dam. His elderly parents' mud-brick house collapsed as the family tried to dismantle it to comply with official orders. Mr. Fan and his wife were buried alive for hours, and his parents died.

The family's troubles aren't over. Now the Chinese government says it plans to induce as many as four million more people to move from homes near the shore and in the surrounding mountains. The Fans' new homestead, up a hill from the old one, may be among them.
WSJ's Shai Oster interviews Fan Zhongchen, one of 1.4 million people forced to leave their homes by the creation of the Three Gorges Reservoir.

The mass uprooting is just the latest controversy to plague the $25 billion Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric project. Built to tame the violent annual floods of the 4,000-mile Yangtze River and to harness its power, Three Gorges is now threatening many of the rural residents it was intended to help. Since the dam first cut off the Yangtze's flow in June 2003, parts of the reservoir's shoreline have repeatedly collapsed. Waste from neighboring farms and villages is creating a water-pollution crisis. And by flooding hundreds of square miles of rich farmland, the reservoir has robbed hundreds of thousands of farmers of their livelihoods and overcrowded the remaining land.

Size is supposed to be their advantage, but it just makes for bigger disasters.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 7, 2007 6:53 AM