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.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
RSS