Jonathan Watts - When a Billion Chinese Jump

Thousands of soldiers were dispatched to the area. 6The vice minister of water resources flew in by helicopter to lead an emergency team charged with inspecting and repairing the dam. As they rushed to find out how much the quake had weakened the structure, the barrier was also tested by a rainstorm, which increased the volume of the reservoir and the pressure on the concrete wall. Fortunately, it held. The spillways were opened. 7As the water ebbed away so did the danger. That night, a relieved inspection team confirmed the barrier was stable. What they did not reveal is that the dam may have triggered the quake. This was to be the biggest scientific aftershock.

Zipingpu had been built on a fault line that had been still for millions of years, but seismic activity had increased after the reservoir went into operation. Each time it filled and emptied, more than 300 million tons of water rose and fell. It was like a giant jumping up and down on a cracked surface. Several leading scientists speculated that the result was a reservoir-induced earthquake. By stilling the water, they said, the engineers may have moved the land.

No nation on earth has gone as far as China in trying to stabilize its hydrology. For more than 2,000 years dams and dikes have been at the heart of the country’s politics and civilization. Under the principle of Tianming, or the “Mandate of Heaven,” emperors were judged by their ability to control the environment as well as the people. Earthquakes, floods, and droughts indicated that the world was out of balance and a change of rule imminent. To avoid rebellion, emperors knew they had to find harmony or at least impose order on chaos. Controlling the rivers was central to ruling the population.

Though the Mandate of Heaven was introduced at the start of the Zhou dynasty (1100 BC), the concept is far from dead. If anything, efforts to tame the torrents have been ramped up to new levels under a politburo dominated by former engineers. Billions of tons of concrete have been poured into the Yangtze, Yellow, Pearl, Liao, Songhua, Han, Huai, Jinsha, and Min rivers for hydroelectric and flood-control projects. The country’s waterways are now blocked by almost half of the world’s 45,000 biggest dams 8and many more smaller barriers for reservoirs, sediment control, and water diversion. China’s president, Hu Jintao, is a trained hydroengineer. His view of the world has been shaped by his knowledge of water and how it can be controlled. This approach and its consequences are most apparent in Sichuan, the vast southwestern province named after its waterways. 9

The mightiest of them is the Yangtze, which, if its tributaries are included, accounts for 40 percent of the water volume in China and feeds a delta that produces 40 percent of the country’s economic output.

Zipingpu Dam sits on the Min, one of the Yangtze’s most spectacular tributaries. This 734-kilometer river starts high in the northern Sichuan mountains and flows down to the plains north of Chengdu, the provincial capital. The 10-kilometer stretch near the earthquake zone reveals how the philosophy and science of hydrology have changed since ancient times. At one end is Dujiangyan, a 2,200-year-old Taoist eco-engineering system that harvests water seasonally for irrigation. At the other sits Zipingpu, a concrete megadam that constipates the river to generate power. There are few sharper contrasts in China between the desire to find harmony and the instinct to impose order.

Dujiangyan is one of the oldest and most remarkable hydroengineering schemes on the planet. Built in 256 BC as an irrigation and flood-control system, it has been credited for providing prosperity for Sichuan and establishing a base of agricultural production that allowed Chinese civilization to endure for millennia. It is the antithesis of a dam. Instead of a permanent obstruction, the levees, weirs, and channels of Dujiangyan allow the Min to be harvested during the summer floods, when part of the river’s waters are diverted toward the plains for agriculture. The rest of the year, the Min follows its own course. Unlike dams, the channels have almost no effect on the migration of fish and other species. Maintenance is minimal. The ancient system still functions today, irrigating more than 6,000 square kilometers of land. It was barely affected by the earthquake.

The United Nations has recognized the waterworks as a World Heritage Site. Chinese environmentalists describe it as a model of Taoist eco-engineering. 10Historians believe this huge irrigation and flood-control project created the conditions for the unification of China by reducing floods and ensuring sufficient food surpluses to fund a strong army for the Qin emperor. 11The subsequent political system in which subjects had to pay tributes to the emperor by boating them along tributaries (hence the name) is underpinned by the river-centered philosophy that partly originated here. 12

Taoist temples in the area are dedicated to the third-century BC Qin-era administrator and engineer who designed Dujiangyan, Li Bing. 13His project fit comfortably with the sages’ understanding of water as an element associated with goodness, fecundity, and the principle of wuwei, or yielding power. Lao-tzu, the sixth-century BC Taoist philosopher, observed: “Water is good. It benefits all things and does not contend with them. It settles in lowly places that all disdain.”

In the modern era, however, the prevailing approach to water is not to go with the flow but to block it. Higher upstream, the barrier at Zipingpu exemplifies the “Scientific Outlook on Development” of President Hu. The future leader of China entered the water business at the height of the Great Leap Forward, a period when the nation was rallying to Mao’s call for a war on nature. From 1959, Hu spent six years studying hydraulics in the Department of Water Conservancy Engineering at Tsinghua University, 14then moved to Gansu for his first job outside academia: overseeing the resettlement of people from the Liujia Gorge Dam. His old work unit, Sinohydro, has since expanded under his presidency to become the biggest dam-building company in the world, with operations in forty-two countries. Although growing awareness of the risks posed by dams has cooled enthusiasm in most developed nations, lobbying by the president has helped Sinohydro and other Chinese firms embark on a global building spree. 15The company has already built 70 percent of the hydroelectric capacity in China, including the world’s biggest dam in terms of generating power (Three Gorges), the world’s tallest dam (Xiaowan), and many of the world’s most controversial dams (including Merowe in Africa and Bakun in Asia). In 2006, Sinohydro built Zipingpu Dam. Two years later, its engineers were the first to be called to repair the damage done by the quake.

Each generation of communist leaders aims to leave an ideological legacy. “Mao Zedong Thought,” “Deng Xiaoping Theory,” and Jiang Zemin’s “Three Represents” are the closest the ruling party has to a canon of beliefs. Hu’s contribution is “Scientific Development,” which attempts to balance economic progress and concern for the environment and social equity. The approach is vaguely defined: It aims at quality over quantity and harks back self-consciously to the Confucian harmony between man and nature, but in practice, it often proves to be more about engineering projects and new technology than scientific research or lifestyle changes. Nonetheless, it is—at least on a rhetorical level—a breakthrough for the environmental movement because millions of cadres across the country are now theoretically committed to putting the economy on a sustainable track.

If that sounds like qualified praise, it should. The huge Chinese ship does not change direction easily. Policy and thinking are still guided by the momentum from an earlier age and the selfish desires of the present. The dam at Zipingpu is a case in point. Like the railway to Tibet, the barrier is the realization of one of Mao’s dreams. It was conceived in 1955 after the chairman expressed disappointment that he could not swim in the Min because its waters were too turbulent. The Sichuan party secretary was so embarrassed that he ordered local officials to build a reservoir. 16