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Chinese villagers block Beijing's plan for new dam

When the hydro-engineers made their way up the steep, winding Himalayan road to Chezhou village, they knew that they could not expect a warm welcome from the residents.

They were coming unannounced to survey the site for a dam in Tiger Leaping Gorge -- one of the deepest and most famous ravines in the world -- that would submerge every house in the community and force locals to leave a mountain idyll that had been home to their families for generations.

But they did not anticipate just how determined the villagers were to prevent the dam from being built. All 10 members of the team were abducted and held hostage until government officials came to plead for their release. In a show of solidarity more than 4,000 residents staged a demonstration.

The story of the Chezhou protest earlier this year is slowly spreading beyond this remote community and is now being told up and down the reaches of this spectacular gorge, which rises up 3,500m from the Jinsha river to the peak of towering mountains in Yunnan Province.

Grassroots movement

It is a sign of China's increasingly assertive environmental movement, which is using the law, the media and mass mobilizations to promote grassroots participation in the decision-making process for big infrastructure projects.

Northwest Yunnan -- one of the most ecologically diverse and spectacular regions in the world -- has become a focus of the green movement. The provincial government recently announced that half a million people would be relocated over the next decade in a push to triple the output of hydropower, which energy-hungry China sees as a cheap and clean alternative to nuclear or coal-fired plants.

None would be as effective -- or as politically controversial -- as the dam proposed at Tiger Leaping Gorge. Towering 278m high with a reservoir stretching back more than 193km, it would generate more power per cubic meter of water than other Chinese hydropower plant and help to alleviate the build-up of silt further downstream at the wider but shallower Three Gorges Dam.

But environmentalists say it would force the relocation of 100,000 people, destroy 200 species of wildlife, and threaten the growing tourist business in the Shangri-la region.

"We live in such a beautiful place that we don't want to leave," said Xiao Jialin, a Chezhou villager. "We want the right to participate in the decision-making process."

Temporary stoppage?

Their protest appears to have worked, at least temporarily. The prefectural government has publicly stated that it will not push ahead with a dam if local people are opposed. The 300-strong survey team, which was previously working up and down the 160km area of the proposed reservoir, has also reportedly halted its work.

But the Yunnan government and the National Reform and Development Commission -- the most powerful body in the central government -- both favor a dam at the gorge. They are said to be paving the way for an announcement giving the go-ahead in 2008.

Yu Xiaogang, head of Green Watershed, a non-governmental organization which runs seminars on environmental issues and residents rights, believes that Tiger Leaping Gorge is a key to green activism.

"It is particularly important because there are many people there who are ready to stand up and protect their interests," he said. "We can't oppose all dams, but we want to stop the bad ones."

Local officials, who are supposed to represent residents, are reluctant to oppose higher authorities.

"I am worried about the possibility of a dam, but we have been told there will be very little impact on the environment," said A Wa, head of the tourist bureau of Shangri-la.
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