Jonathan Watts - When a Billion Chinese Jump

There is reason to hope that Mao’s view of nature will go the way of Mao’s view of politics, but this has not happened yet. Momentum is a powerful force in a country the size of China. Once started, engineering schemes are difficult to stop. Once locked into a certain technology, more spending is often required to deal with the unforeseen consequences. Dams are a case in point.

Hydroelectric plants appear to be green, because they emit no carbon. 39But the reality in Sichuan and Yunnan is often the opposite. 40After many dams are built, dirty factories and coal mines soon follow them. Because hydroelectricity generated in remote mountain areas cannot be economically supplied to the national grid, local governments encourage chemical and smelting plants to move near to dams. Unfortunately, those energy-intensive industries require a constant supply of electricity, which dams are unable to provide in the dry season. The only way to avoid seasonal fluctuations is to open coal-fired power plants to provide supplementary energy. For that to be viable, mines have to be dug close by. 41The result of this cycle is that clean energy turns dirty very quickly. The consequences are alarmingly apparent in southeast Sichuan, where I saw areas of verdant hillside speckled with black coal mines. Some of the world’s dirtiest industries are moving into this spectacularly beautiful area. Panzihua and Zhaotong have become hubs of production for yellow phosphorus and other heavy-polluting, energy-intensive processes that have been phased out elsewhere in the world. 42There are few more glaring examples of how rich countries outsource pollution to China. Hydro plants along the Jinsha (the Yangtze headwater) lead the way. Ironically, many of those same dams have qualified for carbon credits under the Clean Development Mechanism even as they help to foul an area not far from Shangri-La. 43

Similarly, one dam often spawns others. A major reason for the cascade of hydroelectric dams on the Jinsha is to ease the buildup of silt at the Three Gorges. It is a similar story on the Yellow River. 44As the dams expand, so does the influence of the power companies behind them. From 2000 to 2002, China experienced a rush for hydropower as five newly created utilities, Huaneng, Huadian, Zhongdiantou, Guodian, and Datang, divided up the major unexploited rivers of Sichuan and Yunnan. 45These firms are extremely powerful. Their heads rank at vice-ministerial level in the political hierarchy, but they often also exert informal influence through family ties. 46Though nominally under the jurisdiction of the most powerful body in government, the National Development and Reform Commission, the utilities can often evade the full societal and environmental costs of their operations. 47

But they have occasionally been defeated. One of the greatest reversals for the hydropower lobby occurred at Dujiangyan. A dam that had been planned nearby at Yangliu Lake would have flooded the ancient waterworks. The local authorities and power companies knew this was controversial and started construction work in secret, but even with China’s strict censorship controls, it is not easy to hide a dam. After the plan was exposed, a coalition of heritage officials, seismologists, environment groups, academics, and journalists mounted a successful media campaign to block the project. In 2006, the Sichuan governor backed down. This landmark victory was hailed as a sign that authoritarian China was becoming more politically pluralistic. 48But it was not so much a defense of nature from man, or a triumph of Taoism over Maoism; rather it was a patriotic campaign to maintain a cornerstone of the nation’s heritage. A similarly nationalistic motivation would be hard to drum up for other conservation projects.

Like the growing academic and journalistic criticism of megaprojects, the campaign to save Dujiangyan was encouraging but not yet a sign of a dominant new trend.

With the former Sinohydro employee Hu at the nation’s helm, the influence of the dam builders has increased. “Scientific Development” has sidelined dangerous dreamers like Guo Kai, but it has given more influence to corporations that can pay for academic reports to justify commercially driven projects and use political ties to suppress critical coverage in the domestic media.

Hydroelectric energy is increasingly important for China’s energy security and profitable for the utilities. Plans to develop the Nu and the Jinsha have been partially held up, but the pressures to build dams on every river are growing along with the risks to people and the environment.

Four days after the Sichuan quake and one hour after hitching a ride on the dinghy, I walked with the returning migrant Wang along a broken, muddy road to the epicenter at Yingxiu. There were small landslides on the slopes above us that sent pebbles and rocks bouncing down. Columns of soldiers, some bearing red regimental flags, marched alongside military trucks carrying supplies and equipment. We passed below the massive, fractured legs of a collapsed expressway and trucks knocked down like skittles by boulders the size of houses.

This was a road Wang had taken many times in his youth, but he did not slow for a second. Such was his hurry to return home that I could barely keep up. He stopped only when we reached Yingxiu, the nearest town to his village. The seismic ripple had wrought its greatest destruction here. The town was pulverized. In the worst-hit area, the primary school was no longer recognizable as a building. It was reduced to chunks of stone, pieces of twisted metal, and scattered intimate belongings. Rescue workers with dogs sniffed for bodies under the rubble while parents kept an ever more hopeless vigil.

Not a single building in this town would ever be used again. The structures had collapsed, been buried, or cracked and buckled beyond the point of being safely habitable. Concrete had never seemed so brittle and fragile. The residents were more yielding and resilient, but still in shock and pain. At least 3,000 had died, and thousands more, including countless unregistered migrants from the surrounding countryside, were missing under the rubble. Battalions of soldiers were camped out on the plain, as far as possible from the mountain slopes and possible landslides. Helicopters and boats evacuated anyone who could be persuaded to leave. Most of those who stayed did so because they were waiting for the bodies of loved ones to be found. Others, pragmatically, held corpseless funerals, burning clothes in place of the missing. Their pyres burned alongside the river as night fell.

Wang had not yet reached his mother’s village, but soldiers warned him not to go any farther into the disaster zone. The path forward was narrower, the sides of the gorge steeper, and landslides made it almost impassable. “There is only death that way,” said a soldier, forbidding us to continue.

Wang did not want to delay, but the soldier gave him no choice, at least for now. He went off to seek food at a refugee tent. I felt sure he would try again in the morning and wondered if I should try then to rejoin him.

I met up with an Australian Broadcasting Company TV crew, who had hiked across the mountains, risking landslides and aftershocks, to get to Yingxiu. We shared food, a satellite phone, and insect repellent. When rain started to fall, they offered me space in their tent on the edge of the army camp. The drizzle was refreshing at first, but then it started to pour. Soon, a full-blown mountain storm was trapped in our valley, the thunder rolling up and down almost without a break. Lightning tore across the sky above while—”Bloody hell, do you feel that?”—a series of powerful aftershocks jolted the earth below my sleeping bag. With death and destruction outside, soldiers everywhere, and water building up behind a landslide farther up the valley, the thought flashed through my mind that this was as close to the apocalypse as I ever wanted to get.