China has been the most active dam-building nation, and now has perhaps 50 per cent of the world's dams. The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtzes Dam, now under construction, will be, if completed, the largest dam in the world -- in terms of size, power produced, persons relocated (possibly as many as two million), cost (estimates run to $75 billion), and potential risks. It is also a project with a decade-long history, the story of which can provide many lessons in the politics of large dams.

Sources:
o Barber, Margaret, Gráinne Ryder, Damming the Three Gorges: What Dam Builders Don't Want You To Know, 2nd ed., (Toronto: Earthscan, 1993).
o Dai Qing, Yangtze! Yangtze! (Toronto: Earthscan, 1994). [Originally published in 1989 in Chinese.]
o Edmonds, Richard Louis, "The Sanxiá (Three Gorges) Project: the environmental argument surrounding China's super dam," Global Ecology and Biogeography Letters, 1991, 1: 105-125.
o Fearnside, Philip M., "The Canadian Feasibility Study of the Three Gorges Dam Proposed for China's Yangzi River: A Grave Embarrassment to the Impact Assessment Profession," Impact Assessment, 1994, vol. 12: 21-57. [Condemns the feasibility study
of the Three Gorges project sponsored by CIDA, and argues for need for greater openness in assessment of impacts and project decisions, in China and elsewhere.]
o Lieberthal, Kenneth, Michel Oksenberg, "The Three Gorges Dam Project," Chapter 6, pp. 269-338, in Policy Making in China: Leaders, Structures, and Processes, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). [Discusses the history and politics of the project from the 1950s to 1986. Very useful examination of internal Chinese politics, and the place of the dam within it.]
o Luk, Shiu-hung, Joseph Whitney, Megaproject: A Case Study of China's Three Gorges, (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1993). [Extensive, and scholarly, collection of papers on various aspects of the project. Essential.]
o Pearce, Fred, The Dammed, "China's Sword of Damocles," pp. 235-241 [a profile of the Three Gorges controversy.]
o Probe International, "The Three Gorges Project" [Collection of newsclippings on the project.]
o Topping, Audrey R., "Ecological Roulette: Damming the Yangtze," Foreign Affairs, 1995, 74(5): 132-146.