Alert: China's Three Gorges Dam is in trouble
The world's largest hydroelectric dam could be in danger of collapsing.
Three Gorges Dam. Photo by John Encarnacion.
This is a developing story in the American news media, but it’s been years in the making: China’s Three Gorges Dam may be in danger of collapse as heavy rains over the last several days are pummeling the Yangtze River system. Mass flooding is already effecting many of the Yangtze’s tributaries, imperiling China’s food supply, and threatening the lives and property of hundreds of millions of Chinese.
That’s generally where things are at right now.
But what if Three Gorges Dam collapses?
The dam problem
At over a mile in length, Three Gorges is the world’s largest cement structure and largest hydroelectric power plant. It is massive.
However, the construction of the dam was controversial from the beginning as numerous engineering critics cited the unstable riverbed foundation, the seismic activity caused by the weight of water being held back, and the corrosive effects of high levels of phosphorus in the Three Gorges Reservoir as potential weak points that could contribute to cavitation, which in turn could build to a catastrophic break.
As the picture below indicates, the dam already appeared to be under pressure (note the less than straight line of the dam) two years ago. The left hand image is from 2009, the right hand image from 2018.
Source: Asia Times
Now, reservoir levels are nearing max levels on the dam, even with water being discharged downstream. The controlled flooding is already testing the capacity of the dam’s structure and systems, and more heavy rains are expected early next week.
Dam politics
Chinese officials, of course, deny that there’s a problem (they’ve done so in the past with another dam disaster). They claim that despite stress on the structure of the dam, it is capable of holding.
Such denials have, as any thinking person would assume, been met with skepticism as video footage and social media posts are slowly leaking out illustrating the gargantuan nature of the flooding and the potential disaster of a collapse.
Of course, fresh off of the PR disasters of coronavirus and its treatment of Uighurs, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can ill afford another catastrophe, especially one that hits directly at their legitimacy.
What does it all mean?
As it stands, the current flooding is disastrous and has displaced tens of millions, ruined food stores, and destroyed whole towns and cities. This isn’t a question of a disaster forestalled, it’s a question of a disaster compounded.
Should Three Gorges collapse, close to a third of the Chinese population will be affected over thousands of square miles. This would be one of the largest manmade disasters in history.
Both Wuhan and Shanghai would be in the path of floodwaters. Wuhan we’re all familiar with as the epicenter of the current pandemic, but for those less familiar with Shanghai, this is the country’s commercial capital.
A collapse of Three Gorges would thus be a humanitarian and economic disaster for China.
Would it destroy the CCP? Probably not. The CCP has weathered many storms, figurative and literal. However, it will have to demonstrate its legitimacy and competence somehow. In cases like this, it’s not uncommon for authoritarian regimes to seek to shore up support with adventures abroad.
This could take the form of renewed border clashes with India, bullying Taiwan, a naval confrontation with the US in the South China Sea, or any number of other areas where China could flex its muscle.
These foreign adventures may already be in the works due to the current flooding, but a Three Gorges collapse would accelerate those plans.
Additionally, with a massive power plant destroyed and millions without energy resources, China’s massive appetite for oil and coal will only grow. While this may contribute to an uptick in global oil prices, it’ll also make the South China Sea that much more important to China’s military brass, entrenching their commitment to controlling it.
And what about the US? How will it and other world powers respond? I’m going to save that for future newsletters because as of this writing the dam hasn’t collapsed yet. It may, in the end, hold out. But this email is to put the situation on your radar. We’ll know more next week.
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