CHINA: Sluice gates on one of the world's largest rivers shut yesterday, starting the countdown to an eco-disaster or securing economic growth, depending on your view. Jasper Becker reports.
Over the next fortnight, the Yangtze silt-laden waters will rise 400 feet, drowning forever the ancient fortresses, temples and tombs celebrated in China's great epic The Romance of the Three Kingdoms under a 365 mile-long reservoir.
Yesterday the 22 sluice gates in Yichang were shut, blocking the flow of world's third largest river.
Strengthened by summer storms, the waters will swiftly mount the sides of the towering walls of the Three Gorges, whose majesty has been celebrated by generations of poets.
Among the hundreds of ancient sites hastily excavated or removed is the tomb of Liu Bei, king of the state of Shu who lived 1,700 years ago.
For some, like former premier Li Peng, it will be a moment of triumph and vindication.
A massive engineering feat which many said never could and never should be attempted, the Soviet-trained hydro-engineer pushed ahead in the face of world condemnation in the aftermath of Tiananmen Square.
Some sources claim Chinese and foreign teams of experts have struggled to complete the final section of the great wall of concrete stretching 1½ miles, forcing China to postpone the flooding by several months.
Officials on Friday denied that alarming cracks in the concrete had been discovered, and that SARS fears had prevented Canadian, Swedish and Swiss inspectors from reaching the area.
"There have been no delays," insisted Mr Tong, a spokesman at the Three Gorges Construction Committee. "Everything in the project is going ahead as planned; nothing has been affected by SARS".
While Chinese leaders celebrate, many of the 700,000 residents who have been moved remain bitter. They claim initial promises of better lives and higher compensation have not been kept.
"The local government owes each household more than 5,000 yuan (£4,000) in resettlement compensation," said a peasant interviewed in Kaixian county where over 100,000 are being moved. "Thousands are refusing to evacuate their homes until they get the compensation due to them."
Some 120,000 peasants have been relocated to 11 other provinces in coastal China, but many have returned, claiming they were cheated and cannot find jobs.
"Instead of fields, we were offered wasteland to farm," complained another peasant from Yunyang county who, along with thousands of others, was forcibly relocated to Hubei province.
Along with some 100 others who decided to return home, they were protesting outside the county party headquarters when squads of heavily-armed riot police arrived. In the riot which followed, the protesters smashed the offices of the emigration department and dozens were arrested.
Dozens of peasants who have lead protests and petitions have been arrested and imprisoned for disturbing social order, including those who spoke to the foreign media.
"Corruption is everywhere in Chongqing. Most of the party secretaries and heads of the villages in Chongqing have been falsely reporting on the numbers of migrants and pocketed the money themselves so they are living well but we are suffering," said another peasant.
The government is investing 100 billion yuan for relocation of inhabitants, and is making sure their rights are respected, said Gan Yuping, deputy director of the project's construction committee. "The government is paying greater attention to the resettlement than to the project itself because people are more important."
When the gigantic project is eventually finished in 2009, and the water rises to 600 feet, over 1.2 million people, and perhaps as many as two million, will be moved, making this the largest resettlement programme ever attempted.
By then the dam will have 26 turbines capable of generating 18,200 megawatts of electricity. This will stop the pollution from China burning 50 million tonnes of coal a year.
Two 700 megawatts generators will begin operation in August, and two others in October. Later this month giant ship locks will begin to operate following the suspension of shipping for 60 days.
Yet many, like environmentalist Dai Qing, still fear the dam will be an environmental catastrophe, creating a giant cesspit and rapidly filling up with sediment washing down from the deforested slopes of Tibet's great mountains.
The government says it has cleared up 4 million tons of garbage and industrial wastes, and the rubble from 12 million square metres of demolished housing.
"Decades of accumulated trash from the villages, hospitals and cemeteries, including highly-toxic waste material from the factories and the corpses of millions of poisoned rats, are all still there," said Dai Qing.
Yet China is still a long way from building the necessary water treatment and sewage plants. All the pollution from Chongqing and other industrial cities still goes straight into the Yangtze, making its water so poisonous that no one living near it dares drink it or use it for agriculture.
China says it has plans to invest £3 billion over the decade in hundreds of sewage and waste disposal plants.