When they started work on the Three Gorges Dam in 1994, Communist Party officials made the dream of Sun Yat-Sen, the father of the Chinese revolution, who had imagined such a project in 1919 a reality. More than 70 years later , the project is finally confirmed and the objectives are numerous: first, to improve maritime transport on the Yangtze River in central China, which is less economically developed than the east coast of the country.

Then, the authorities hope to take advantage of the dam to fight against the floods of the "Blue River", often deadly and costly.

Finally, and above all, Beijing wants to produce large quantities of hydroelectric power to initiate the shift towards a greener China, less dependent on coal-fired power stations.

>> To read: "China commits to carbon neutrality by 2060, a first"

On this last point, the bet has been successful: since 2014, the dam power station has produced the largest amount of hydroelectricity in the world and, according to official data, would supply electricity to more than 40 million homes per year. .

Landslides and submerged valleys

But this barrier of excess is also that of discord.

Moreover, when in 1992, the National People's Assembly was called to vote to validate the construction of the dam, 177 deputies opposed the project and 664 abstained.

Only two thirds of members are in favor of construction.

For the Party, it is a snub.

Because the Pharaonic site is also the bearer of many controversies.

With the construction of the dam, villages, historic sites, entire valleys are swallowed up by the waters.

A total of 1.4 million people are forced to abandon their homes and land to be relocated to towns, sometimes to neighboring provinces.

In addition to these displaced people, there are threats to the environment.

At the time, already, many experts warned: the ecological impact of the dam would be catastrophic for the region.

Biodiversity in danger, ecosystem threatened and natural disasters favored… All the lights are red.

Those who sounded the alarm 10 years ago were right.

Today in the Yangtze basin, some animal species have disappeared.

Upstream, entire forests have been swallowed up by water and downstream, some rivers and lakes have seen their water level drop drastically.

Worse, landslides are said to have increased by 70% since the dam was put in place and water pollution is at an unprecedented level.

Faced with the dangers and challenges posed by this change in the landscape, hundreds of thousands of people have again been displaced.

We returned to the Yangtze Valley, where the magnitude of the damage from the Three Gorges Dam is matched only by the dam itself.

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