Disgorging

OUTSIDE China, the monster Three Gorges dam across the Yangzi river is one of the most reviled engineering projects ever built. It is blamed for fouling the environment and causing great suffering among the 1.2m people who were relocated to make way for its reservoir. Inside China, officials insist that the dam is an “unsung hero” (in the recent words of the Yangzi’s chief of flood control). But controversy over the project occasionally flares. Amid the country’s worst flooding in years, it is doing so again.

The Communist Party took enormous pride in the completion of the Three Gorges dam a decade ago; officials said it would play a vital role in taming a river which, when it flooded, often claimed hundreds or thousands of lives. Recently, however, censors have permitted a few ripples of complaint to disturb the glassy surface of state-run media. Online critics have asked whether the dam has failed to protect cities from flooding or whether it has caused earthquakes—and have not had their posts deleted. Granting permission to complain may seem surprising. But officials have reason to feel confident. The much-denounced dam seems to be passing its...Continue reading

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