When a Billion Chinese Jump (11 page)

They wanted to redraw the hydrology of Asia. Pointing on a vividly colored map of Asia’s river systems to the four thickest blue veins coursing through Tibet, Guo said only one, the Yangtze, ran east to China. The others flowed south to form the Brahmaputra in India.

“The rivers cross the border. It is a waste. The water is needed here. Look how dry China is.” And with that his finger moved north to Xinjiang, Gansu, and Inner Mongolia, where the map was indeed marked with huge brown and yellow splodges of desert.

Fixing the problem, he said, was a simple matter of logic. India and Bangladesh get so much rainfall they often suffer from floods. If China, with a seventh of the precipitation, diverted a third of Tibet’s rivers for its own use, he argued, all three nations could benefit.

Not surprisingly, politicians in Delhi and Dhaka are unwilling to donate even a drop from the Brahmaputra, which they consider vital for irrigation and drinking supplies. Indian newspapers have expressed outrage at Guo’s idea. If Beijing was ever to formally adopt such a plan, there would be a high chance of a water war between Asia’s two most populous nations.
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Fortunately, there is no sign of this happening any time soon. Despite the support of several old generals, Guo and Li have been politely shunted aside by the politburo. Fiercer critics dismiss them as eccentric has-beens.

Guo’s hydrological training was not just old-school, it was no school. He taught himself about river systems while locked in a cellar by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. A hydrological study of western China was one of the only books in his makeshift cell. Criticized by the young ideologues and filled with self-doubt, he devoted his detention first to the book and then to drawing up a plan to solve China’s water problems. It was to become a lifetime obsession.

But Guo’s reputation was not helped by his association with a still bolder plan to use nuclear weapons to blast a 2-kilometer-wide air tunnel through the Himalayas that would allow warm, moist currents from the subcontinent to circulate north. The general calculated that 200 warheads, each with the power of the Hiroshima bomb, would be needed to clear the necessary 3 billion cubic meters of rock.

The proposal to shift the planet’s most immovable object raised eyebrows even in mountain-moving China. Guo was ridiculed. One of his associates, Mu Qinzhong, ended up in prison. Guo distanced himself from that crazy scheme, but he has not completely given up on his revolutionary solution to China’s water shortage.
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Fortunately, more cautious heads have prevailed.

Guo’s failure was revealing and, from an environmental perspective, encouraging. Although the old Maoist beliefs live on in grand nature-conquering schemes, they are now contending with rival ways of thinking that show more respect for the environment.

A new generation of scientists, journalists, and environmentalists are questioning the fundamental tenets of nation-building with the tacit
support of senior leaders. They are a source of hope that the Scientific Outlook on Development might one day pioneer a more sustainable path between Taoism and Maoism.

The new generation is far better educated than their predecessors, many of whom secured posts through political contacts during the Cultural Revolution (when most universities were closed). Rather than battle nature, this new wave sought to understand man’s place within it. Instead of expansionist megaprojects they focused on grassroots conservation work. Instead of using science to support political dogma, they saw it as a means to pursue truth and efficiency. Instead of secretive, top-down planning, they championed bottom-up accountability and transparency. And, most important, they had a different view of nature’s limits because they were confronted on a daily basis with the foul consequences of pollution, depleted resources, and hard-to-maintain megaprojects. Even some of the old-timers agreed it was time for a rethink.
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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.
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But the reality in Sichuan and Yunnan is often the opposite.
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After 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.
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The 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.
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There 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.
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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.
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As 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.
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These 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.
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Though 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.
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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.
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But 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.

Suddenly, I felt thrilled to be alive, relishing every second of the experience. Feeling such elemental extremes was terrifying but also a privilege. It lasted a few hours. The tent leaked a little. There was another, smaller aftershock. Then the storm eased, the earth settled, and I drifted off to sleep.

There was no sign of Wang the next morning. I presumed he had slipped away before the soldiers woke. He faced a perilous journey. People were still being crushed by landslides and tumbling boulders. I felt guilty and worried, but also relieved that I wasn’t with him. Not for the first time as a journalist I wished a person well as I left them to dangers I was unwilling to face. To this day, I wonder what became of Wang.
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The cause of the Sichuan quake remains contentious. While it is still classified as a natural disaster, some scientists believe the Zipingpu Dam may have been at least partly responsible.

Geologists noted the Yingxiu-Beichuan fault line had been relatively inactive for thousands of years before the dam was built. Fan Xiao, a chief engineer of the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau, argued that the 320 million tons of water in the reservoir may have jigged it back into life.
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His views won support from several foreign seismologists.

“The added weight [of the Zipingpu reservoir] both eased the squeeze on the fault, weakening it, and increased the stress tending to rupture the fault,” wrote geophysical hazards researcher Christian Klose of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “The effect was 25 times that of a year’s worth of natural stress loading from tectonic motions … When the fault did finally rupture, it moved just the way the reservoir loading had encouraged it to.”
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Reservoir-induced seismicity is a known phenomenon. There have been several well-documented cases across the globe.
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In the planning stage for the dam on the Min, Fan and other scientists had warned of the risk of a quake but they were ignored.
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The government rejected claims that Zipingpu caused the quake. Several senior Chinese geologists said seismic activity was unchanged after the reservoir filled and that, in any case, the 280-kilometer rupture in 2008 was far too great to have been caused by a dam. While evidence for a link is inconclusive, their views have prevailed. The power of the hydroengineering lobby is unshaken. A year after the disaster, the authorities announced plans for twenty new plants on the upper Yangtze and its tributaries, many of them close to fault lines.
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These were not the only risks that development posed to Asia’s greatest river, nor were humans the worst affected victims.