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| Monday, 19 January, 2004 Thai groups battle new China dam  By Tom Butler BBC News Online
China's blueprint for its latest power project is meeting stiff resistance from outside its own borders — in Thailand and in Burma. In order to fuel its ever-expanding industrial growth China needs more electricity, and its latest plan involves harnessing the power of the Nu river to build 13 hydro-electric dams. It will rank along side similar developments by China on the Yangtze and Mekong rivers. But although it rises in the Tibetan mountains, the Nu river is also South East Asia's second longest. From China, it flows into Burma and along the Thai border, where it is known as the Salween river. And groups in those countries are angry about what they say will be the devastating effects of the project downstream.
"There are many Thai-Karen communities living along the river and its tributaries. These communities have been living there for generations, " said Chinarong Sretthachau, Director of the South East Asia Rivers Network (SEARIN), based in Chiang Mai. "Their lives depend on the richness of the lush ecosystem and natural resources of the Salween river basins," he said. Campaigners also point out that the Nu-Salween is the last free-flowing international river in the region. The area it flows past in Thailand is a national park and a wildlife sanctuary, which campaigners worry will be disrupted by the creation of a huge power project upstream.
"Large dams have led to the loss of aquatic biodiversity, of upstream and downstream fisheries, and of the services of downstream floodplains," said Mr Chinarong, quoting from a report by the World Commission on Dams in 2000. Economy But for some it is a question of priorities. Ian Fells is chairman of the New and Renewable Energy Centre in the UK, and an adviser to the World Energy Council. "I think we are rather sentimental about these things at the end of the day. A lack of electricity is a terrible situation," he said. "China's economy has been growing at 8% to 10% for the last five years and they are just short of energy supplies, in particular electricity. Their industrial development is faltering because of a lack of power," said Mr Fells. The Nu-Salween river project would help to deal with that shortage — Mr Fells said the 20,000 megawatts it would generate is enough to power 10 cities.
China has said it would assess the potential environmental impact of the development within its own borders, but it has made no guarantees about the effects in countries downstream. Late last year SEARIN sponsored a letter to the Chinese ambassador in Bangkok signed by itself and 82 other Thai and Burmese groups. Protesters claimed that communities along the river would be "drastically impacted" by the scheme and they called on Beijing to consult local people in Burma and Thailand. Power surplus The Thai government has been reluctant to enter the fray on behalf of its citizens — probably because it has its own plans for the Salween river. It is proposing two dams along its own stretch of the waterway — and it is also helping to finance another across the border in Burma's Shan state.
The Thai government has said a thorough environmental study would be carried out. But it maintains the impact of such dams downstream could be "both positive and negative." The Thai plans have also outraged the groups opposed to China's dam building. Whatever the shortages in China, they argue that Thailand has no need for more power because, they said, there is approximately 40% surplus supply of electricity in Thailand. The projects are being monitored by the California-based International Rivers Network (IRN), which has expressed concern about how the proposed Shan development — the Tasang Dam — will affect local people who have already suffered under the military government. "Construction of the dam would subject residents living in the project area to further systematic human rights violations," said IRN's South East Asia Director, Aviva Imhof. Campaigners have warned that it could lead to the displacement of local people, along with environmental degradation The area surrounding the Tasang dam site used to be one of the best teak forests in Burma, according to Ms Imhof.
"Now, teak and other hardwood trees are being cut under logging concessions given out by the military regime," she said. But those who support hydro-electric power view it as a so-called "clean" power supply and argue that China has already been attempting to reduce environmental damage by opting for the projects. "It is important to remember that hydro-electric power is being used because it does not put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere," said Ian Fells of the New and Renewable Energy Centre . "China is trying to move away from coal-based power which is heavily polluting." As the arguments stack up on either side, it seems unlikely that China — or Thailand and Burma — will rethink plans for their developments on the Nu-Salween. Power failures this summer in 16 out of China's 31 provinces highlighted the problem And hydroelectricity is viewed by the Beijing government as a solution — an absolute necessity for a rapidly expanding economy. |
| Friday, 5 September, 2003
China's ghost town vanishes By Tony Cheng The BBC's East Asia Today 
The Yangtze River lies at the heart of Chinese civilisation. Some of the earliest artefacts of Chinese history were found on its banks, and the river is a central theme that runs through Chinese literature. That literature also has a rich tradition of ghost stories, and until recently, one city on the river epitomised many of those other-worldly beliefs. But now, that city itself has disappeared, its ghosts claimed by the spirits of the Yangtze. "Fengdu is a tourist attraction for the Chinese people. We call it Ghost City," said Hu Yu Kua, a tour guide, who has been working on the Yangtze River for the past 15 years. The City of Ghosts is one of her most popular destinations. "Chinese people are very interested in the city. There are as many legendary stories as historical stories about it," she said. "And when the water rises to 175 metres (570 feet) above the sea level, the ghost city will have completely disappeared," she said. Vanishing act When I visited Fengdu in November last year, it certainly lived up to its reputation as a ghost town. Most of the 750,000 people who lived there had deserted. Entering in the early morning light, the empty shells of people's homes were lit only by the fires of the elderly who had refused the leave.
From the vantage point of a ghost temple on a hill overlooking the city, you could see that most of it had already been destroyed. Today as you pass down the river, Fengdu has almost completely disappeared. It has been submerged in the reservoir behind China's Three Gorges Dam, the largest dam construction project in the world. A 500km (325 mile) long lake has been created, and more than a million people have been moved out of their ancestral homes. But despite initial misgivings, government spokeswoman Jiang Qi Yu said the migration process had now been accepted. "First, some of the peasants didn't really understand this policy, and some expressed a willingness to stay behind," she said.
"But later on, they realised they had a better standard of living outside their previous quarters, so now people are satisfied with their new way of life." For a minority clan living just below the dam, this new life looks good. Their village has been turned into a scenic tourist spot. As the mist rolls down the lush mountains, they sing from their boats to the throngs of tourists looking down at them from above. But despite the opportunities offered by the new dam for the living, the dead will fare far worse. For the Chinese, the soul lives on while it is worshiped. Now that generations of tombs have been consigned to the depths of the Three Gorges Reservoir, the ghosts of Fengdu will be joined in their watery home by those whose descendants have been forced to desert them. |
| Thursday, 23 August, 2001 Mekong: 'Mother of rivers'
For such a small place, Laos is surprisingly hard to pin down. You come away feeling the ever-present Mekong, the country's economic and spiritual lifeline, is the one thing you can be sure of. South East Asia's longest river winds its sinuous but insistent way from top to bottom of this long, thin, landlocked country also known as the "Land of a million Elephants". Rising, like all the great rivers of Asia, on the Tibetan plateau, the Mekong makes its way through six countries before emptying into the South China Sea, more than 4,000km (2,500 miles) from its source. But it is Laos more than any other single nation that seems to belong to the Mekong. It grew up along the river's banks. The Mekong united the country's many ethnic groups. It remains the major focus of settlement and the national highway of trade.
'Mother of rivers' The word Mekong translates in Lao as "Mother of Rivers". As one Lao told me: "Its water is our blood." Its flood plains provide rice, its waters fish (the people's main source of protein) and its 2,000km (1,250-mile) passage through Laos is still the most convenient communication route. The French colonised Laos mainly because they hoped the Mekong would link them to the fabled riches of China. The upper reaches of the river proved unnavigable. But today China itself is busy deepening and widening the river to improve trade and tourism links with South East Asia. Small islands have been blasted away in their entirety. The Chinese are also building dams, siphoning off water needed by countries further downstream, like Laos and Cambodia. Potential for conflict
This is just one of a host of potential sources of conflict between the six countries sharing the Mekong. Other concerns include the over-harvesting of fish, pesticide run-off and the dumping of human waste. Massive deforestation has already caused annual flooding. To manage the resources of the river basin and harness the waters for hydropower and irrigation, the Mekong River Commission was set up in 1995 by Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, with China and Burma as dialogue partners. The director of the Laos Mekong River Committee, Boriboun Sanakisam, took me out in one of the high-speed powerboats favoured by rich, young Thai businessmen keen to do business with their resource-rich neighbour just across the river. He assured me that the commission provided a forum in which the various neighbours could iron out their problems smoothly, with what Asians like to call their traditional aptitude for consensus. But ever since its 14th century heyday, Laos has found itself the helpless victim of its bigger neighbours as it struggled to play them off against each other. As a waiter at my hotel told me, Laos is like a small boat that can easily be upset when larger craft come too close. Changing pace
In the north of the country, I took a small longtail boat down the Mekong and retraced the journey taken by countless Lao kings from the Buddha caves of Tham Ting to the royal jetty at the old capital of Luang Prabang. The thick, treacly, almost purple-coloured water oozed past and all I could hear were the birds in the forest on either bank. Golden-roofed temples peeked up through the trees. Four-hundred kilometres (250 miles) downstream, the present capital of Vientiane is beginning to buzz with nightclubs and modern hotels. Thailand and Laos are now joined across the Mekong by the Australian-funded Friendship Bridge. But even here, the pace of life is still far slower than in any other Asian capital. One senses that what Laos really wants is to remain as undisturbed as possible, tucked away behind its mountains and its river. For the time being, at least, the mood is still: Who cares? As long as we've got the Mekong, life goes on. WATCH AND LISTEN The BBC's Tony Cheng"The river is a central theme that runs through Chinese literature"    SEE ALSO:  RELATED INTERNET LINKS: The Vientiane TimesThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites
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We would like China to tell us frankly about its dam project 
