The Three Gorges Dam, Examined

The Three Gorges Dam is the world’s biggest dam. Everything about it is huge. And that includes the controversies. It has changed China forever.
In this video, I want to talk briefly about this massive, titanic piece of infrastructure and look at it from multiple angles.
Links:
- The Asianometry Newsletter: asianometry.com
- The Asianometry Patreon: / asianometry

[@DwayneScriven]

My father (jack scriven) was the president of the canadian company Teshmont Consulting Inc. They were the company tasked with allocating where all the electrical power the dam would produce would be sent to and how it was split up!! I remember as a child having dinner with chinese business executives and their CCP Handlers at our house in winnipeg, manitoba, canada where Teshmont Consulting was based. I even have a picture of me and my family and all the chinese staff at winnipeg airport when they left! great video, thanks for your work.

[@Dept246]

Canada, France and Brazil were the 3 countries that provided assistance to China in building the 3 Gorges Dam.

[@lucasprado6705]

Itaipu in South America actually produces more energy annually than the three gorges, even though it is smaller, due to higher river flow throughout the year

[@seokjin3000]

I don't think that's entirely correct. From Wikipedia: Installed capacity: Itaipu 14 GW, Three Gorges 22.5 GW Annual production of electricity: 2021 - Itaipu: 66.369 TWh. Three Gorges: 103.694 2020 - 76.382, 111.800 2019 - 79.444, 96.880 2018 - 96.585, 101.600 2017 - 96.387, 97.600

[@UpNfamish2]

The most balanced and informative about this 3G Dam. Thanks.

[@bijayapun]

China: Dam USA: God Damn

[@SilentStorm_5]

Great video man! A lot of good information that I haven’t heard yet! (Assuming it is all true, there are A LOT of bad channels on KZbin when it comes to the 3GD, it’s all the same stuff repeated) but you sound VERY informed, so I think I am safe to assume you are being completely honest. (It’s just new information to me, and I am to lazy to fact check it 😂 well at least I’m honest🤦‍♂️😂) so great job on the research and how you put it all together, and you did a great job with the narration! I am guessing this had to be a decent amount of work for you, but I think it was worth it! I know most people will just say good video, so sorry for the long comment, I just wanted to let you know why I thought it was good👍 happy to give a like for this video and subscribe to your channel!

[@shazmosushi]

Checkout out his entire library of playlists! If you have even a passing interest in technology, I recommend the playlist "TSMC - Essays" about the worlds leading chip manufacturer called Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation. Yes it's a mouthful, but most of the world's best tech companies use TSMC to make their high end chips (from Apple processors to AMD processors to NVidia graphics cards). A few years ago TSMC took the lead with the most advanced chip manufacturing process and became the king of chip making (Intel held that crown for decades). The world hasn't caught up with TSMC not being a household name like Intel is. I find it fascinating that little Taiwan is punching above its weight and creating world class companies!

[@SilentStorm_5]

@@shazmosushi that’s awesome! I will for sure be checking that out! Thanks for the break down as well, made it even more interesting. Nice plug for this channel, he can thank you for at least one view! 😂 (sorry I couldn’t remember the name of your channel brother, I hate that I can’t go back and look when I’m writing a comment, and I don’t want to retype sh!t!😂)

[@shazmosushi]

That reminds me: Asianometry, please re-order your "TSMC - Essays" playlist in chronological order. Currently the first video in the playlist is NOT the one a viewer should start with...

[@Asianometry]

Got it. Done.

[@SilentStorm_5]

@@Asianometry brother...(assuming you’re a male) that is awesome to see a KZbin channel that actually listens and responds to their audience! I am getting more and more impressed, and glad to see someone interact with the fans, because I watch and comment a decent amount on KZbin channels (if you couldn’t tell. Lol) and it’s rare to get this type of interaction. I hope you get a good size of subscribers, and can maybe make a career out of this. Hats off to you sir! Lmao, before anyone says it, yes I know it was a males voice I heard on the video I watched, but I don’t know if he is the only one that works on this channel.🤷‍♂️😂

[@pikminlord343]

Another excellent video. Well done!

[@skipperson4077]

Thank You for this, best I've seen on this subject. One question: silting is known to put an age on dams, that is they'll eventually silt up, won't run as planned forever. It seems to me that if China would crack down on water polluters, they could harvest the silt out of the dam for farmers to apply to their fields as a combo fertilizer/carbon source, this would allow the dam to 'age' longer, win/win.

[@bigbob1699]

What would the river basin look like today if the dam had not been built ? Would the floods have been acceptable compared to others ?

[@Asianometry]

I did a follow up video that looks at some of the big storms that have hit the dam in 2016 and 2020. But it looks like the dam has stopped potential floods that would have been as bad as 1998.

[@bigbob1699]

@@Asianometry Seems like ,dammed if they do or dammed if they didn't. Hope the body count is low .

[@joaosabino2909]

Hydroelectric dams are the best generators of electricity, and water storage for farming; perhaps there are problems with this one, but there should be many more around the World.

[@Michael-ci8so]

When they become orphan dams, they become big environmental problems.

[@LoneWolf-wp9dn]

they require a lot of very careful maintenance or they fail and flood everything... already happened many times

[@adaslesniak]

@@LoneWolf-wp9dn How many? Much more than natural disasters?

[@housemana]

The issue here is that we're almost completely capped on dammable rivers. and would you damn ever river to a fate of being dammed? lmao get real. yall are so weird.

[@Jessiffin]

Dam good video

[@RebeccaAnneTruly]

Interesting that its 45 stories tall.

[@hsooi2748]

Well, you can't hold on to your past forever, sometimes you just have to move on. It is sad, but that is how it is. 旧的不去，新的不来。 If you don't let go of the past, you will never appreciate the future. As long as something survives, it is worth trying something different and learning from mistakes.

[@DannyLeWasTaken]

Yeah but is it worth it to destroy the past in the name of technology and advancement? is it worth it to use a more or less a permanent solution to what is most likely will become a temporary problem as new technologies and policies emerge to help alleviate China's electricity demand?

[@hsooi2748]

@@DannyLeWasTaken You save what you can, and you move on. It is not possible to move forward, if you are still fighting the past. Nothing is permanent, including the technology today, so why cling to everything?

[@ehfik]

dam son. good video, just like the rest of your uploads

[@hobog]

gobi desert sand -> more silt for Yellow and Yangtze rivers?

[@zsarimaxim692]

Gobi is to the north. The silts came from the Tibetan plateau.

[@jaytee4482]

3 Gorgeous Dam

[@nerinavshrestha3338]

Mother of all rivers. This river is Dragon.

[@henrichretien9866]

Tout va très bien, Madame la Marquise ... tout va très bien ... Tra la la la ....

[@chavdarnaidenov2661]

There is always a price to pay, but many times it is worth it. Austria gets 2/3 of it's energy from hydro, which means it's energy is abundant, it's goods are competitive, jobs stable and environment clean. The US is no guiding light in this, because it's business-culture is inimical to long-term investments. The interesting thing in 3GD is, can that fertile silt be scooped up or bailed out and transported to agricultural fields.

[@meowmeowbobo]

When you say it can generate 14gw of nominal clean power any cons isnt important anymore. That is an absurd amount of energy.

[@Q1745]

That’s enough to power 9 time traveling DeLoreans…

[@greg9057]

Through the axis of the world off through all the weather patterns off just a little bit like 3% good deal huh now think back 91 is that when it got filled up we've been having all sorts of bad weather ever since

[@shazmosushi]

3:20 Interesting pronunciation of Tiananmen. (though in English everybody pronounces way different to the original language eg, Genghis Khan as "Gen-gis Karn" instead of "Chingus Harn")

[@Asianometry]

I listened again. I definitely muffed it. It sounds like I was trying to say Tiananmen and Tainan at the same time. Ha. My bad.

[@SilentStorm_5]

Shazmosushi I didn’t know this, so thanks for that. That is one good thing about all this 3GD stuff, it has taught me a lot of things about China that I didn’t know. some good, some BAD! But the bad is more the CCP, Most Chinese people are not the problem. Kinda like us in the U.S when our government does some foul stuff. 🤬 but our government is also not even close to the CCP! Seriously WTF! 😂

[@kathyschreiber8534]

It is still 2020 and the rain over there is Over the Top. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if the Dam collapses. Mother Nature is trying to create Balance~~

[@jaytee4482]

Surprise .... your wish didn't come true, try again next year?

[@Dept246]

Mother Nature might release Yellowstone or the Cascadia Earthquake.

[@marcheck3400]

Back in the 90s when I was still a child, hydroelectric power was seen as green renewable sources of electricity and generally better than fossil fuels. But as impact of large dams are better understood attitude towards hydroelectric power changed. Back in the 90s I would have supported the Three Gorges Dam, but now I am not so sure anymore. And I really find China's large dam building craze that is still going on today very concerning. Another thing to add here is that the Three Gorges Dam sits on an earthquake active region, and despite this more dams are being added upstream to control silt and to take advantage of the mighty tributaries of Yangtze river for power generation. I am not sure whether this is a good idea to begin with.

[@Dept246]

60,000 dams around the world with 3,700 currently planned or under construction.

[@megalonoobiacinc4863]

just think about the dams they are building in Turkey, not only are they submerging ancient cities and historical sites, they also threaten the water security of neighboring countries downstream, increasing geopolitical tension

[@gregorymalchuk272]

@@megalonoobiacinc4863 Turkey is a developing country and their people are desperate for cheap energy.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

All the criticisms of dams are bad faith. These anti-human environmentalists manage to find a problem with all forms of carbon free electricity that actually work, namely hydro and nuclear.

[@wsmithe2209]

3 gorges dam is not the world's biggest dam in the world, it's the biggest hydroelectric power dam so far today. There are some dams that bigger than 3 gorges dam in the world.

[@goldengrain9851]

They sounded and looked so proud of the work on the History channel and Modern Marvel's. according to the photos the dam is deformed.

[@goldengrain9851]

@Traiano Welcome maybe they should study the ground the dam is sitting on, I'm no scholar by far but the settlement might have shifted not the dam itself if there is a fault or plate near by.

[@petergilkes4391]

Do you mean the bad piece of PhotoShopping on the satellite image?

[@goldengrain9851]

@@petergilkes4391 you tell me, obviously you hold a PHD in engineering, and advance technology. I yield to your mastery of photoshopping.

[@petergilkes4391]

@@goldengrain9851 Well done with the heavy sarcasm. I suppose you only look at the Doomsday Nonsense on the 3GD. If you'd watched the video made by an American and two Brits you'd have seen it was quite OK. But I suppose you want it to collapse because it would punish the 90 million Communist Party members. And the unfortunates who drown; but hard luck to them, eh?

[@goldengrain9851]

@@petergilkes4391 give it up sir, your Google education and your doctrine in crome doesn't shake me. if you're so opinionated why didn't you just make your own post instead you 💩 all over my comment, you sir are what's wrong with society please go somewhere with your "crabs in a boiling pot mentality". Weakling bullies.

[@shazmosushi]

There's a lot of wild speculation on the internet about the collapse of the Three Gorges Dam (given how common "tofu building" construction techniques are in China) due to it nearly "overtopping" earlier this year. The collapse of the Three Gorges Dam would clearly cause millions of deaths directly (a 100 meter high wall of water travelling at 100 kilometres per hour reaching highly populated downstream cities like Yichang in less than an hour), and many more through disease. I don't doubt that the Three Gorges Dam has many structural issues that the Chinese Communist Party members in charge are doing their best to cover up, but a catastrophic failure/collapse has been predicted for decades. The idea that it's going to collapse the imminently has been vastly overstated.

[@Asianometry]

I agree with you on this too. The collapse of dams and especially this one is overstated and barring some failure of government won’t happen. But it will take a lot of maintenance and management in the coming years and that should be a lesson for governments thinking that big dams are silver bullets.

[@SilentStorm_5]

I fully agree with both of you, but what does piss me off is, if it really is that big of a possibility, they would be doing things to prepare for that. I mean they do have ghost city’s they can fill, but what does that do for the farming they will lose if that dam breaks, much less the clean up even if they move the people out in time. That’s a hard pill to swallow for me. I hope some other government can take control of China, (with in the Chinese people) that will start whatever is needed for that dam, because it’s obvious the CCP won’t. But that is sounding more and more like a pipe dream?🤷‍♂️ one can only hope I guess.

[@SilentStorm_5]

@@DavisBlank you’re kidding me right?? Have you not seen how corrupt the whole CCP is? Just because they have advancements, doesn’t mean they are not rotten at their core. And yes, people might die, but they are already imprisoning MILLIONS just because of religious beliefs, hurting millions more by their building projects that has their own interests in mind, and not their citizens! They try to control EVERYTHING their citizens do, the rivers are basically poisonous because of their building practices and I can keep going on. Please don’t ask me dumb questions. The CCP is really good at putting up a façade, but that’s not the real picture AT ALL! Oh, and this dam..... you can look up about the horrible construction because of all the CCP corruption. There is so much stuff to point out about the CCP, It can’t be done in a KZbin comment, but there are plenty of things you can look up yourself, I HIGHLY Recommend it!

[@shazmosushi]

Don't get into a flame war. I'll just mention that I don't trust any government to correctly maintain a dam and keep the people informed. Things are a little bit better with thousands of independent media organisations and whistleblower laws, but dam collapses STILL happen everywhere in the world. Lookup the photos and videos from the Oroville Dam crisis in California just 3 year ago. Large amounts of fast moving water can do some crazy damage

[@SilentStorm_5]

@@shazmosushi lol no war here, just wanted to let that person know I have PLENTY of reasons for my comment and my view of the CCP. I would have been nicer but I personally didn’t like his tone. Lol but I think I made myself very clear so that person won’t ask me dumb questions again, when innocent people are being mistreated. That I will never apologize for, or be nice about but I understand that you didn’t want an argument. It’s all good.👍lol dams do collapse, and all governments do suck to a point, but how it’s handled is WAY different between a China dam collapsing and an American dam collapsing. That’s what that person was getting at, not just the dam. So I informed him/her. Take note that there was no reply. Lol. But you are good in my book shazmosushi.

[@UnitedAsia]

More CLEAN ENERGY! Good job China 👍👍👏👏👏👏

[@agoat6146]

The greatest poluter in the whild is chin-a

[@johnhicks6380]

Don't keep talking about it just tell us when it breaks

[@jaytee4482]

perhaps you need to get the 3 pigs to blow harder at the dam, maybe one day it'll break?

[@sarcasmo57]

I have been there 3 times. All dams fail.

[@teektalon3310]

Interesting. God bless all the innocent when this GOV. CONTROLled un Godly lock breaks.

[@cosmos6107]

When will Americans protest the building of the Hover Dam? Save your tears for your own.

[@blue-pi2kt]

The Hoover Dam would never be built today. 100 people died building it and it irrevocably destroyed the downstream environments. It would never pass modern environmental regulations nor would it be considered a strong fiscal investment in a modern cost-benefit governance framework despite its benefits.

[@jangounchained5279]

And yet they have the BIGGEST FLOODS EVER - DESPITE THAT DAM !!! 🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️👎👎👎 Ccccccc in time they will destroy it and build series of small dams...

[@zsarimaxim692]

Dams cannot prevent flood, but they can mitigate the damage flood causes, and TGD did just that.

[@millyashby4629]

Honestly this is what happens when corrupt deceitful people want it all and the citizens pay for it all and i don't mean money wise if you all got a drain

[@Hotelsoap6911]

I'm gonna laugh my ass off when the dam breaks

[@shazmosushi]

the collapse of the 3 Gorges Dam will cause millions of direct deaths, and millions more through disease. It would likely be the biggest single disaster in human history. Have some respect for those downstream people who may lose their lives. They don't get to choose their government like much of the rest of the world. They don't even have free access to information so in many cases can't know any better.

[@SilentStorm_5]

@@shazmosushi AMEN brother!!

[@Hotelsoap6911]

@@shazmosushi nah they are even worst so idrc they did this to themselves for having xi as their leader and its his fault that this wall is gonna breake so before you start being a bitch actually think about who's fault it actually is for failing is own country

[@zsarimaxim692]

@@Hotelsoap6911 Oh sure it's gonna break just as the coming collapse of China that's going to happen, for the last 30 years.

[@kuanxu2627]

阴阳人说话蛮骚滴嘛，不过你死前估计看不到了。yinyangrenshuohuamansaodima,buguonisiqiangujikanbudaole :)

[@wongstephen4513]

Call out to God Jesus Christ repend all your Sins and pray for Forgiveness and Repentance what has been done to the people of God. Amen Amen Amen

[@kuanxu2627]

We are atheists, we r evil communists and we save ourselves:)

[@pavlovsworld9122]

When will people in China have the balls to revolt. Thanks for your piece. I can sense the frustration. I dont believe there is any controversy about this damn. Should never have been built based on the merits. My sadness is from the fact if the damn does give in we will never hear about it in the West until weeks after.

[@SilentStorm_5]

Oh no, we will hear about that! The destruction it will cause, Will be on a level rarely seen in history. Oh, remember it’s dam, not damn. But damn is a good word to say about what damage it will do. Like DAMNNNN That’s a lot of water. Lol. It’s hard to joke about the situation, but we got to find something to laugh at in life sometimes. Edit: I also don’t know if it is about the Chinese citizens having the balls to stand up against the CCP, because they can get pretty harsh punishments for just saying something, much less doing something. But there is more and more news of Chinese citizens standing up for themselves, even though some “disappear” afterward. I have a lot of respect for those people, and hopefully more and more will join together, and maybe that will make it harder for the CCP to punish and silence them.

[@SilentStorm_5]

@Ronny Lim there has been videos showing people ripping signs off government buildings, so some are starting to lead the way...unless you were talking about me leading the way.....ummm nope. I know my old ass ain’t doing nothing! 😂

[@yangshujian]

@@SilentStorm_5 Dude you are brainwashed by those anti-China propaganda. Most of Chinese people are Living well and Have no interest in fighting against the government at all.

[@SilentStorm_5]

@@yangshujian oh no, I agree 100% with you. Anybody in the city’s are mostly fine, it’s just how the poor is treated, religious people, western China as a whole, anybody they look down on basically. Not brain washed at, just talking facts.But there are more and more Chinese citizens speaking out against the CCP. Even in those big city’s.

[@yangshujian]

@@SilentStorm_5 There're indeed more and more Chinese citizens expressing their opinions about some government policies. But it doesn't mean that they are against the CCP. Just like lots of protests in American don't mean the people are actually going to overthrow the U.S. government. There're always people who complains in every region, but only a few will end up with full scale clash with the government.

[@chrissikora3359]

It will collapse

[@kellythesinger2945]

What percetage of your Viewers are Americans? it's disrespectful to use European measurements when 80% of your listeners are Americans. Aye?

[@user-vl1sc5sd2i]

Clown

[@housemana]

would be nice to have a followup to this excellent video to see where we are now. @Asianometry