- In the shadow of the Jade Dragon Snow Peak, deep inside
the Tiger Leaping Gorge, Chinese developers are operating in secret to
push through a massive dam project that will wash away the section of the
Yangtze river valley thought to have been the real location for the fictional
Shangri-La.
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- Local tribesmen have revealed that work is already under
way on a massive project that would flood a Unesco world heritage site,
displace more than 100,000 people and destroy the way of life of the unique
Naxi people, one of the world's only surviving matriarchal societies. It
would also bring an abrupt end to the nascent tourism industry in the remote
southwestern Yunnan province.
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- The battle to save the gorge, one of the deepest in the
world, has pitted a David-like alliance of green groups and local tribespeople
against the Goliath of the Huaneng Group, China's biggest independent power
producer, working with the Yunnan provincial government. The company is
run by Li Xiaopeng, son of the hardline former prime minister Li Peng,
who oversaw the massacre at Tiananmen Square. Mr Li was at the forefront
of the controversial Three Gorges Dam project that was pushed through in
the teeth of strident opposition from environmentalists and residents.
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- "The stakes are extremely high. Chinese environmentalists
have decided to make this their next major campaign," says Ma Jun,
a consultant who was the first to produce a study on the dam's implications.
"I'm optimistic they will succeed because this case is a touch-stone
of all the big talks on balancing environmental preservation with development."
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- Opponents say the reservoir will devastate local cultures,
robbing people of their farms and livelihood, and leave tens of thousands
of mostly Tibetans, Miao, Yi, Bai, Lisu and Naxi minorities homeless. It
would also condemn ancient villages with distinctive architectural styles.
Concerns are mounting over the fate of the Naxi with their unusual matriarchal
tradition, which has drawn an increasing number of visitors to the area.
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- The formerly nomadic people thought to have originated
in Tibet, passes property to the youngest daughters and forces teenage
boys to canvas door-to-door for partners in a system of "walk-in marriages".
They are also the last ethnic group to use a form of hieroglyphics, a tradition
which is passed down through tribal shaman, known as Dongbas.
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- Premier Wen Jiabao agreed this year to suspend plans
for 13 dams on the Salween river in response to protests from Burma and
Thailand and Chinese environmentalists. Construction was supposed to have
been delayed while an environmental assessment was undertaken but this
was brushed aside by the promise of a power facility capable of generating
30 per cent more electricity than the Three Gorges Dam.
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- Electricity shortages forced factories on the east coast
to close down this summer and economic pressure has seen China's oil imports
grow by more than 30 per cent this year. China already has more than 50,000
large and medium-sized dams and is running out of waterways to stem.
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- Nine NGOs, including Green Earth Volunteers and Friends
of Nature, have petitioned Mr Wen hoping to persuade him to save an area
recognised by Unesco. "We call on the authorities to fulfil the vision
of science-based development ... to balance the human interests against
nature, in order to leave our precious world heritage like Tiger Leaping
Gorge, the first bend of the Yangtze, to the world and to future generations",
the petition said.
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- Backpackers had long ago discovered the joys of trekking
through a gorge which gets its name from the legend of the tiger, said
to have leapt across it at the narrowest point where only 100 feet divide
the edges.
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- The province originally hoped to reserve the area around
the historic town of Lijiang for tourism, but the state has designs for
eight major dams along a 350-mile stretch of the upper Yangtze. Villagers,
worried that they would lose their farmland, staged a rally in Lijiang
in July to voice their objections. They are being supported by the state
forestry bureau, the seismological bureau and the Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences.
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- The dam is being pushed by the Yunnan government as a
way of dealing with the consequences of earlier environmental disasters.
Water from the reservoir is to be diverted to dilute the heavily polluted
lake which supplies the provincial capital of Kunming.
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- The industrial centre of the province is being strangled
by water shortages despite sitting next to one of the largest fresh-water
lakes in Asia. Decades of mismanagement have shrunk the lake and the remaining
water is too dirty to drink.
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- Yunnan's forests have all been chopped down in the past
50 years so not only has Dian Chi lake silted up but so have several reservoirs
constructed to solve Kunming's water shortage. The danger posed by silt
to the Three Gorges Dam has already forced Yunnan to dam the upper reaches
of the Yangtze specifically designed to trap soil that would otherwise
wash into the Three Gorges reservoir.
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