ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the various controversies that have involved the Three Gorges Dam in regard to the overall compatibility of this project with the goals and parameters of sustainable development. Specifically, it summarizes the contending positions of dam supporters and opponents in China over two key components of the sustainable development model mentioned previously: land usage and popular input. Proponents of the Three Gorges Dam in and outside the Chinese government emphasize the dam’s enormous installed capacity of electrical generation, which is currently listed as 18,000 megawatts. The controversy over the Three Gorges Dam must, of course, be interpreted within the larger context of China’s overall energy policy. In the 1930s, the Chinese sociologist Fei Xiaotong observed that in the Yangtze Valley “honor, ambition, devotion, and social approval are all linked up with the land”. Dam supporters and critics have sparred over the issue of altered land usage and its impact on pollution.
