After 13 years of immense physical effort and technical ingenuity, China yesterday put the finishing touches to its controversial Three Gorges dam, the world's largest hydropower project.
The official completion of the dam was marked by a short ceremony at the site broadcast live on state television, which touted it as an "important historic moment."
"I can announce to the Chinese people ... that the Three Gorges dam is completed," Li Yong'an, manager of the Three Gorges Construction Company, said shortly after the last load of cement was poured onto the top of the dam.
PHOTO: AP/XINHUA
The 2,309m-long, 185m-high block of concrete across the Yangtze is meant to control floods and generate electricity for a power-hungry nation, but for many Chinese it is about much more than that.
"The Three Gorges dam is excellent proof of what Chinese can accomplish," said Cao Guangjing, vice president of the China Yangtze Three Gorges Project Development Corporation. "This project will serve to inspire the Chinese people."
Although the final tonne of concrete has been poured, the immense structure will still not be fully operational for another two years.
The last generators need to be installed, and work still needs to be done on the ship lift that, together with a ship lock, will allow ocean-going vessels to navigate the vast reservoir that is filling up behind the dam.
Although it is not all over yet, many of the engineers felt it as if a page had been turned and a chapter in their personal lives was nearing conclusion.
"I started in 1993, fresh from university, and I have been here ever since," said engineer Wang Zilin, 43, from Zhejiang Province. "It's been my whole life. I even found my wife here."
Even while work was being carried out on the dam, engineers and laborers were reminded that flood control was one of the main reasons behind the giant project.
In 1998, a devastating flood on the Yangtze uprooted millions of families and killed more than 1,500 people. Two much larger disasters in the 1930s each claimed more than 140,000 lives.
Nevertheless, critics continue to argue that silt build-up and other problems mean the dam will fail to provide the hoped-for flood relief.
Opponents also see damage to the environment, ruin to China's heritage and misery to local residents forced from their homes for the project.
However, harnessing the power of China's mightiest rivers is a dream harbored by generations of Chinese.
In the early 20th century, Sun Yat-sen (
Mao Zedong (
It is no longer just the stuff of poetry. On the left bank, 14 sets of 700-megawatt turbine and generator units are already in operation.
On the right bank, another 12 700-megawatt units are under construction.
With a capacity already equivalent to Itaipu on the border of Brazil and Paraguay, which is now the world's largest operating hydroelectric dam, the Three Gorges will eventually overshadow all others.
A new tender process is due to be held by the end of the year for adding a new power station with another six 700-megawatt generators, underground on the right bank.
The dam will then become "the biggest in the world," according to the China Yangtze Three Gorges Project Corporation.
One final benefit touted for the project is that it will elevate the Yangtze for hundreds of kilometers inland, allowing ocean-going vessels to travel as far as Chongqing.
This will, planners hope, help open up China's underdeveloped west, which has in many ways missed out on economic reforms largely because of its isolation from overseas markets.
To ease upstream navigation, a ship lift will enable vessels of up to 3,000 tonnes to pass the dam in around 45 minutes, while a ship lock will do the same to 10,000-tonne vessels in two hours and 45 minutes.
With work on the dam complete, thousands of migrant workers will go home, many of them to Yunnan Province near the border with Vietnam, and to Qinghai Province near the Tibetan plateau.
But Wang was confident the dam's completion would not leave him unemployed.
"Every project takes at least 10 years, so I'll have more than enough work until I retire," he said.
"I've been lucky to work with something that I really love," he said.
FEELING THREATENED: The first military commission under Kim Jong-un’s leadership to last longer than a day is a sign of a growing escalatory doctrine, an analyst said North Korea discussed assigning additional duties to its frontline army units at a key military meeting, state media said yesterday, suggesting that the country might deploy battlefield nuclear weapons targeting South Korea along the rivals’ tense border. The discussion comes as South Korean officials said North Korea has finished preparations for its first nuclear test in five years, as part of possible efforts to build a warhead to be mounted on short-range weapons capable of hitting targets in South Korea. During an ongoing meeting of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers’ Party on Wednesday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and
TRADE TALK: Xiao Qian said that Australia had fired the ‘first shot’ in deteriorating trade relations with China, but improvements were possible if Canberra takes action China’s new ambassador to Australia chided protesters who heckled him yesterday during a speech about the future of relations between the two countries. Xiao Qian (肖千), who has only been in the role since January, had just begun his speech at the University of Technology Sydney when the first protesters interjected, calling for freedom for Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. The ambassador was repeatedly interrupted by sign-wielding protesters, some criticizing China’s treatment of the Uighur people as well as the university for inviting Xiao to speak. “People who are coming again and again to interrupt the process, that’s not expression of freedom of
A former South Korean Navy SEAL turned YouTuber who risked jail time to leave Seoul and fight for Ukraine said it would have been a “crime” not to use his skills to help. Ken Rhee, a former special warfare officer, signed up at the Ukrainian embassy in Seoul the moment Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked for global volunteers and was fighting on the front lines near Kyiv by early March. To get there, he had to break South Korean law — Seoul banned its citizens from traveling to Ukraine, and Rhee, who was injured in a fall while leading a special operations
Indonesian President and G20 Chairman Joko Widodo yesterday set off to Europe where he said he plans to visit Russia and Ukraine and meet with the countries’ leaders to urge peace talks. Widodo departed for Germany to attend the G7 summit as a guest yesterday and today, after which he plans to go to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. “The mission is to ask ... President Zelenskiy to open a dialogue forum for peace, to build peace because the war has to be stopped,” Widodo told a news conference in Jakarta. The two leaders would also discuss the
RSS