China’s environment ministry acknowledged that the dam would have an impact on the area’s highly biodiverse flora and fauna.

“The project will affect the spawning and movement of rare fish species, as well as the growth of endangered plants, including the Chinese yew, which is under first-class state protection,” the ministry said, according to Xinhua.

The ministry proposed counter-measures to mitigate the environmental impact, such as “protecting fish habitats in tributaries, building fish ladders and increasing fish breeding and releasing”, Xinhua reported. The project is still awaiting a final go-ahead from China’s state council. [Source]

Reuters’ David Stanway notes that state power firm Guodian, a subsidiary of which will build the new Shuangjiangkou dam, has previously faced criticism from the government for starting work on projects before receiving final approval.

Large-scale hydropower is central to Beijing’s plans for greater use of fossil fuel alternatives. It faces strong and widespread opposition, however, because of its impact on communities, plants and wildlife, to say nothing of accusations that it can increase the risk of landslides and earthquakes. Another currently contentious hydropower project is the long-delayed series of dams on the upper Nu (or Salween) River. For more on the Nu dams and related environmental issues, see ‘Dams & Deforestation: Yunnan’s Water Woes‘ at CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dams, electricity, hydroelectricity, Hydropower, rivers, Sichuan, wildlife preservation, Yangtze
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The translations are by Rogier Creemers of China Copyright and Media.

31 March 2006

Information on “Minsheng Bank Aims 3 Million Yuan Credit Limit Card at Vice-Ministerial Level Cadres” is a false report, please do not reprint it, where it has been reprinted, delete it immediately. Please acknowledge receipt, thank you.

30 March 2006

Network Supervision Office notice: everyone: if you see articles concerning the poisoning of the band “Super Mary” (Luo Jing, Han Xuan), if the article attacks the police, delete it.

30 March 2006

Concerning the case of NetEase thanking for a loan in Japanese Yen, the original text may not be distributed, but if there are positive guiding articles on forums, refuting the notion of NetEase’s Japanese Yen loan, they may be distributed and posted on forums, but firmly grasp the extent, they cannot have radical acts, or whatever calls for demonstrations, etc. Attention must also be paid to the fact that reactions in forums concerning this matter cannot be too ardent or animated.

29 March 2006

If reports have already been reprinted about the opening of the trial on the daughter or a Tsinghua University professor being throttled to death by a ticket seller, please delete it immediately.

26 March 2006

The report “Jiangsu Police Hit on the Head with Gun by Colleagues in Bathroom in Violent Attack” is untrue, please delete it immediately.

24 March 2006

Articles that the Information Office notified to be deleted:

(1) Who Burnt the Summer Palace, Has Nothing to Do With Patriotism!

(2) After Chen Yizou Leaves, the Beijing News Does Not Understand Win-Win

22 March 2006

Articles that the Information Office notified to be deleted:

(1) Only Re-Evaluating Mao Zedong Can Strengthen the Masses’ Faith in Reform

(2) “Yang Xiaokai – A Record on Random Thoughts on Chinese Politics”

(3) A Strong Speech by Hu Jintao to Japan that Is Rarely Known by the People!

21 March 2006

(1) Some Japanese members of parliament have inspected the Diaoyu Islands from an airplane, do not report it, forums are also not to discuss it. Please acknowledge receipt, thank you. (Delete)

(2) Please do not reprint the reported text of the Chongqing Morning Times of Chongqing Plans to Build Two More Dams in the Yangtze – The Total Amount of Installations Exceeds the Gezhou Dam, if it has been reprinted, please immediately remove the article. Please acknowledge receipt, thank you. (Delete)

(3) Please delete the text on expert suggestions to change Beijing into a special administrative zone, and expanding the area by eight times. Please acknowledge receipt, thank you.

 

2006年3月北京网管办发出的禁令（三）
2006-03-31
“民生银行300万元透支卡瞄准副部级干部”的消息，为不实报道，请不要转载，已转的立即删除。 收到请回复，谢谢。

2006-03-30

网监处通知：各位：如果见到关于超级玛丽组合（罗惊、韩萱）中毒的文章，如果文中有攻击警察的就删除。
2006-03-30

有关网易感谢日元贷款一事，原文不得放行，但论坛如有正面引导文章，反驳网易日元贷款观念的可以放行，发在论坛，但要把握度，不能有过激行为，什么号召游行呀等。也要注意论坛里关于此事件的反应不能太热烈和激励。
2006-03-29

如已经转载清华大学教授女儿被售票员掐死一案开庭的报道,请立即删除.
2006-03-26

“江苏警察浴室里遭同行枪顶脑袋暴殴”的报道不实，请立即删除。

2006-03-24

新闻办通知删除的文章

1、圆明园是谁烧的，与爱国无关！

2、程益中走后，《新京报》不懂双赢
2006-03-22

网监通知删的文章

1：重新评价毛泽东才能坚定民众改革信心

2：《杨小凯－－中国政治随想录》

3：一段鲜为人知的胡锦涛对日强硬讲话 ！

 

2006-03-21

1.日本几个议员乘飞机视察钓鱼岛，不报道，论坛也不讨论。收到请回复，谢谢。 （删除）

2.《重庆晨报》“重庆拟在长江再建两大坝 装机总量超葛洲坝”一文，请不要转载报道，已转载的请即撤除稿件。收到请回复，谢谢。(删除）

3.专家建议将北京改为特别行政区 面积扩大8倍一文，请予删除。收到请回复，谢谢。

These translated directives were first posted by Rogier Creemers on China Copyright and Media on November 19, 2012 (here).

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing, Beijing Internet Instructions, Beijing News, censorship, Censorship Vault, Chongqing, diaoyu islands, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, Hu Jintao, Internet censorship, Japan, Jiangsu, Luo Jing, Mao Zedong, Ministry of Truth, netease, Old Summer Palace, patriotism, police, reform, Tsinghua University, Yangtze
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“The full operation of the generators makes the Three Gorges Dam the world’s largest hydropower project and largest base of clean energy,” said Zhang Cheng, general manager of China Yangtze Power, the operator of the generators.

The dam, which first went into operation in 2003 at a cost of $22.5 billion, has a combined generating capacity of 22.5 million kilowatts (22,500 megawatts), the equivalent of fifteen nuclear reactors.

[…] The project began in 1993 despite warnings the weight of the reservoir would dangerously alter central China’s geology, uproot millions of people, poison water supplies by trapping pollution and disrupt the Yangtze watershed.

Hydropower developers have not finished with the river yet. A planned cascade of 25 dams on the Jinsha, the Yangtze’s westernmost tributary, would generate four times as much electricity as the Three Gorges. Critics argue that the south-west’s rivers “can hardly breathe” under the weight of existing dams, while supporters insist that China must make the most of its hydropower potential to combat rising carbon emissions. From chinadialogue:

[… E]arly last month, the Ministry of Water Resources’ Changjiang River Scientific Research Institute, China Three Gorges Project Corporation (CTGPC) and WWF published a report called “China’s Environmental Flows Research and Practice”. The report concluded that there were already too many hydropower plants on some parts of the upper Yangtze and that untrammelled development was affecting the basin’s ecological balance.

[…] Even Cao Guangjing, chairman of China Three Gorges Project Corporation – the state-owned company behind the world’s largest hydroelectric dam to date – is cautious. With more dams, the coordination of water storage and drainage will be problematic, he said; dealing with this challenge is a work in progress, and hydropower development needs to take account of this.

You can’t squeeze all the value out of every drop of water, you need to consider the environment’s needs, he said. “Protect as you develop, develop as you protect. That’s the principle.”

Caixin reporter Liu Hongqiao highlights another water crisis in the region: the devastation of Hubei’s lakes by water overuse and industrial and agricultural pollution. Despite billions of yuan poured into efforts to reverse this decline, economic development has consistently been allowed to override environmental protection.

Hubei, located just above the Three Gorges Dam region on the Yangtze River, was once known as “The Province of a 1,000 Lakes.” It’s total lake area has shrunk to only 3,025 square kilometers from 26,000 square kilometers over the past century, official statistics show.

[…] The facts now point to an urgent situation. National standards say water quality rated worse Category III is not fit for human consumption.

According to a 2012 water quality report released by the Hubei Province Water Environment Monitoring Center, of the 26 lakes surveyed in the province, only one lake met the Category II water quality standard. Water quality in 25 lakes was Category III or worse. Four had Category V water.

“Hubei was once a province with plentiful water resources and nationally it used to rank number one among fish-producing provinces in total aquaculture production,” said Wang Shuyi, dean of the Wuhan University Institute of Environmental Law. “But this advantage has been lost.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dams, Hubei, hydropower projects, Jinsha River, lakes, Three Gorges Dam, water conservancy, water crisis, water pollution, wildlife preservation, Yangtze
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One opinion that’s been resurrected in the midst of the dam debate is its supposed me role in triggering 2008’s devastating Wenchuan earthquake – and that quake had some connection to a previous drought. Journalist Zhao Shilong, opining on the Sina microblog, joined other microbloggers in making this explicit connection: “There are certain connections between the drought and earthquakes. Three years after the southwest drought, the … Wenchuan Earthquake occurred. This year there is a drought in the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River … It is very strange! We should beware of it.” […]

Meanwhile, in the absence of hard (public) evidence that the Dam caused the increasingly serious drought, the state media is on a bit of an offensive. On Wednesday, Xinhua, the state-owned news service, was peddling a story headlined (on its English site): “No evidence that dam causes drought: experts.” And on Thursday the campaign culminated with a new headline: “Three gorges help fight drought.”

In any case, early in the week, and in some quarters, the conversation had expanded into an ostensibly more answerable — and far more sensitive — question: how on earth did the Three Gorges Dam get approved in the first place? An unsigned editorial in the Western China City Daily, a large circulation paper based in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, far from Beijing, noted tartly: “Originally, the project was promoted by the government, investigated by a group of experts, and voted on by the National People’s Congress. Common people, even some experts, could hardly get the opportunity to participate in the process. But the construction of the project swallowed up both the inside and the outside of the reservoir and its adverse effects have also spread through different kinds of channels. Finally, we’re all involved.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing, Chengdu, earthquakes, Sichuan, Three Gorges Dam, Wenchuan, Xinhua, Yangtze
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The dolphin was probably doomed by a combination of legal and illegal overfishing, heavy river traffic and pollution from farms, homes and industry. Some 10 per cent of the world’s population lives and works along the Yangtze, and the baiji has been among the losers in China’s swift economic development.

A team led by Dr Samuel Turvey of the Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, travelled to China and interviewed around 600 fishermen on the Yangtze, asking questions about when and where they last saw a baiji.

‘The problem is that by definition before species go extinct, they become very rare and hard to find. This means we don’t have good information about the dynamics of species decline,’ Turvey comments. ‘But fishermen spend their whole working lives on the river, and we realised that we could use interviews with them not just for information on the baiji but also more general conservation biology data about how extinction happens.’

These interviews didn’t just add to the growing conviction that the baiji is gone forever; they suggested that it didn’t die out in the way currently accepted theories suggest it should have.

The baiji was declared officially extinct in August 2007, but was sighted on the river later that month. It appears certain that no viable breeding population survives, however.

The interviews conducted by Turvey’s group revealed much about the humans who work on the river, as well as the animals that lived in it:

‘It was very disconcerting how quickly people seem to have forgotten about these animals,’ Turvey comments. ‘We’d expected that there would still be memory among fishing communities of what the river used to be like, but we found that knowledge is disappearing fast.’

‘Even if younger people hadn’t seen a baiji themselves, we thought they’d have been told about them by the older fishermen,’ he adds. ‘But we could be sitting talking to one of the elders about when they used to see baiji, and their 40-year old son sitting next to them wouldn’t have any idea what we were talking about.’

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: baiji, endangered species, Yangtze
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China’s manufacturers are moving factories inland to benefit from lower wages than coastal regions and government incentives to spur economic development. That is creating traffic jams on Asia’s longest river, prompting the nation’s biggest container terminal operators, Cosco Pacific Ltd. and China Merchants Holdings International Co., to invest in ports along the 6,300 kilometer-long (3,915 mile-long) Yangtze, which reaches Tibet ….

The Yangtze, the third-longest river in the world after the Amazon and Nile, handles 80 percent of China’s river freight. The waterway ferried 1.34 billion tons of cargo in 2009, more than triple the 400 million tons it carried in 2000, according to government data ….

River freight may triple to 6 billion tons by 2020, according to the city-backed Shanghai International Shipping Institute.

The rise of wages in China has prompted a flurry of speculation in recent months about its implications for the country’s social development and economic growth.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: manufacturing, transportation, Yangtze
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The government says that the local economy has been boosted by the first dam project.

Residents in the area have seen their annual incomes more than double, the government says.

Melissa Chan visits the river communities who say the dam has, in fact, had the opposite affect.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dams, dams resettlement, Yangtze
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© Kate Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Yangtze
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The waters of the Yangtze have fallen to their lowest levels since 1866, disrupting drinking supplies, stranding ships and posing a threat to some of the world’s most endangered species.

Asia’s longest river is losing volume as a result of a prolonged dry spell, the state media warned yesterday, predicting hefty economic losses and a possible plague of rats on nearby farmland.

News of the drought – which is likely to worsen pollution in the river – comes amid dire reports about the impact of rapid economic growth on China’s environment. [Full text]

See also “Ships grounded along Yangtze River” from the Foreign Policy blog; “Water level of Yangtze lowest for 140 years” from China Daily; and “China drought underlines hydropower reliance risks” from Reuters.

[Image: A river bed is exposed as water levels fall along the Yangtze river near Wuhan, central China's Hubei province by AP, via The Guardian]

© Kate Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: drought, sustainable development, water pollution, Yangtze
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A stretch of sandy riverbed has surfaced in the middle of the Yangtze River in Wuhan, thanks to a lack of rainfall and a dropping feed from the upper reaches [obviously thanks to the Three Gorges Dam, but the article didn't mention the dam at all]. This is the year that Wuhan’s Yangtze water level hit its historical low, 14.05 meters. Nearly 20% of the river islands are new in the past five years. [Full Text in Chinese]

[Image: emerged riverbed in Wuhan's Yangtze section, via sina.com]

© Michael Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: drought, Three Gorges Dam, Yangtze
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The idea was born in 2002, when I went on one of the so-called Farewell cruises along the Yangtze with my parents and grandfather. The aim is to offer tourists the chance to visit the area before it is flooded by the Three Gorges Dam. It’s very surreal…

The whole sensory experience was overwhelming. The moment you get off the bus, you’re surrounded by coolies carrying these heavy loads – tourists’ luggage. So I got this idea of making a movie about tourists on this Yangtze cruise boat – a kind of Gosford Park idea that shows the social hierarchy, the lives above and below the decks. And I realized that the people working on the boat were all from the Yangtze area, and that many of their families were affected by the dam. [Full text]

See a trailer for the film via YouTube:

and an interview with Yung Chang:

(...)
Read the rest of Up the Yangtze Documentary (13 words)

© Kate Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: documentaries, Three Gorges Dam, videos, Yangtze
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When I told him I had come to China to see how people felt about their rapid economic change and growing power in the world, Yu just shook his head and laughed.

China was not rich, he told me in tones one might use to explain the world to a small child. Didn’t I know that the only thing they had was cheap labor? How could they make much money like that? No, no, “China,” he said emphatically, “is still a poor country.” [Full text]

[Image by Reuters via ABC News]

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: economic growth, travel, urban rural divide, Yangtze
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The slopes of Chenjialing Village have shuddered and groaned lately, cracking and warping homes and fields, and making residents fear the banks of China’s swelling Three Gorges Dam may hold deadly perils.

The vast hydro scheme is meant to subdue the Yangtze River, but as the water levels rise, parts of its shores have strained and cracked, dismaying scientists and officials and alarming villages such as Chenjialing in Badong County.

Xiang Chuncai, who has lived much of her 84 years on this hillside of orange groves above the Yangtze, recalled waking in fright last year to rattling windows and rumbling noises from the earth. The tremors returned several times in past months, residents of this village in Hubei province said. [Full Text]

Read also China’s rising dam brings wrenching exodus by Chris Buckley:

(...)
Read the rest of As China’s Mega Dam Rises, So Do Strains And Fear – Chris Buckley (109 words)

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: landslides, relocation, Three Gorges Dam, Yangtze
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- Read also the previous posts about Baiji via CDT

© Sophia Cao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dolphins, endangered species, finless porpoise, videos, Yangtze
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Fan Zhongcheng last year joined 1.4 million people forced to flee rising Yangtze River waters caused by the government’s massive new Three Gorges Dam. His elderly parents’ mud-brick house collapsed as the family tried to dismantle it to comply with official orders. Mr. Fan and his wife were buried alive for hours, and his parents died.

The family’s troubles aren’t over. Now the Chinese government says it plans to induce as many as four million more people to move from homes near the shore and in the surrounding mountains. The Fans’ new homestead, up a hill from the old one, may be among them. [Full Text]

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: relocation, Three Gorges Dam, water pollution, Yangtze
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