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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume Three
Spring 2004
The Three Gorges Dam and the Influence of Globalization in Central China - Page 2
by
Boleslaw Czachor
However, focusing on the rewards from the construction of the Three Gorges Dam does not fully capture creative destruction, nor do the rewards mandate obfuscation as a complement to creative destruction. There exists another variant of creative destruction: the creative destruction of people, which few Chinese would accept willingly and therefore the government needs obfuscation. To cite an instance of this type of creative destruction, Shi Fu reveal this dangerous side to the productive hand of globalization by providing a stirring account of the history of dams in China, and the possible future of the Three Gorges Dam. By 1973, 40 percent or 4,501 of the 10,000 Chinese reservoirs with capacities between 10,000 and one million cubic meters were found to have been built below project specifications and unable to control floods effectively. Even more dams had problems relating to the geology of the dam site, and to sedimentation. Most serious, however, were the numerous dam collapses. By 1980, 2,976 dams had collapsed, including the Shimatan and Banqiao dams: “On average China witnessed 110 collapses per year, with the worst year being 1973, when 554 dams collapsed. The official death toll (not including the Banqiao and Shimatan collapses*) resulting from dam failures came to 9,937. . . By 1981, the number of formally recognized dam collapses had risen to 3,200, or roughly 3.7 percent of all dams (Fu 22-23). Fu then lists the estimated “true” death toll for the Shimatan and Banqiao dams as 230,000 (Fu 23). The numbers presented in the article strongly oppose any benefits derived from the Three Gorges Dam. Furthermore, their magnitude, even at the lowest listed “official” death toll of 9,937, make the power and impetus of creative destruction evident. This sacrifice of life shows that progress, in terms of economy, power production, and bringing China on pace with the globalized world, outweighs the life of Chinese citizens. In the case of the Three Gorges Dam, the creative destruction of aquatic life with the filling of the 600-kilometer long reservoir will occur inevitably, while the high risk of killing many innocent Chinese in the case of an unforeseen accident will come to loom from behind the 175-meter high dam. Even engineers such as Ned Paschke, who writes for the journal Leadership and Management in Engineering, express concern about the “safety” of the dam in and area notorious for frequent earthquakes (31). The disparity of death toll estimates, above, embodies obfuscation. From 9,937 to 230,000, Fu and the government distinguish between different death tolls, each calling their own “official” or “true” (Fu 22-23). Although the inconsistencies in statistics exposed by analyzing them through the concept of obfuscation detract from the internal validity of both Fu and the Chinese government, Fu mitigates the possible advantages seen within the completion of the dam by revealing the most valuable commodity at stake downriver from the towering walls of the Three Gorges Dam: human life. The importance of increasing navigation along the Yangtze in the pursuit of a measly yen fades when the possibility exists that the Three Gorges Dam could eliminate downstream settlements such as Yichang, Jiangling, and Shashi, harming hundreds of thousands of innocent Chinese citizens. Thus, obfuscation by the Chinese government supporting the Three Gorges Dam, along with opposing obfuscation against the construction of the dam, becomes a necessity in order to muddy the information al waters around the dam amidst which construction can proceed freely.
In the situation of the Three Gorges Dam, the effects of widespread failures of these past dams underscore the ecological consequences of dam building in China. Although the many dam failures cited above occurred well before the onset of globalization, they provide a justification to question the idea of perpetual progress, or creative destruction, where sacrifices such as the death of aquatic animals need to occur in order to achieve the goal of heightened energy production. The past dams have yielded many prodigious problems, and with these failures, the Chinese government felt the need to push forward and propagate the cycle of creative destruction in order to conform with the concept of destroying, albeit unwillingly, the old and replacing it with the new and hopefully, more efficient. Fu writes, “In 1958, more than 100 dams were built in Henan; by 1966 half of them had collapsed” (Fu 23). Thus, when faced with a lackluster past, obfuscation must accompany the construction of such a behemoth as the Three Gorges Dam in order to divert attention from precedent. In one case, the government states that, “protection efforts. . . involving land animals and the rescuing of flooded species both animals and plants in the area, will be finished by 2010” ( www.china-embassy.org). Despite the noble intentions of the Chinese government, engineers plan to complete the dam by 2009 (Brouwer 36). Consequently, the lag between these two events will inescapably destroy much of the wildlife present in the 600-kilometer stretch of valley flooded by the reservoir. The obfuscation employed by the Chinese government confuses the opinion of the Chinese citizens on the effects of the Three Gorges Dam, giving the government more leeway with its construction. In another example, as Qing writes, “when the Three Gorges project was awaiting approval from the NPC [National People’s Congress], the national press was mobilized to write only positive reports about it. Meanwhile, even before the NPC convened for its vote, the chair made it clear that its approval was not in question. During the course of the session itself, the microphones on the floor of the NPC were turned off to prevent the dam’s opponents among the delegates from voicing their views and generating collective opposition” (Qing 14). Here, the Chinese government obfuscates by concealing the debate from the people of China. Once again, the government conveniently correlates the dam with the positive consequences of a profitable electrical energy market and forcefully omits the awareness of the environmental and social consequences of the Three Gorges Dam. Although it facilitates creative destruction, this overt obfuscation from the side of the government, a characteristic of communist regimes, withholds vital information from the Chinese public and creates and intellectually stratified society that risks the futures of the unknowing public. Nevertheless, communism does not cause the obfuscation in this instance, it merely applies it much more directly than a globalized western democracy would in order for the government to accomplish the goal of finishing the construction of the Three Gorges Dam to gain fiscal and technological ground in the globalized world. Without the help of obfuscation, the forces of globalization in central China could not utilize creative destruction and its supposed advantages.
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