ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights three features of Chinese efforts to build the Three Gorges Dam. First, Chinese elites believed in the national benefits of technologically redesigning the entire Yangzi region. Second, China acted like other late developers and favoured using state power to advance industry. Third, China sought foreign assistance to offset domestic capital shortages. These three trends engendered two developmental styles. The first style was technocratic, and it only waned during the Great Leap Forward and the late 1960s, when Mao argued that will power and mass mobilization were more powerful than technical proficiency, advanced technology, and foreign expertise.
