Yangtze DamLi Peng touts Three Gorges Dam amid China floods
Reuters, September 03, 1998
Li Peng, China's leading proponent of the massive Three Gorges Dam project along the Yangtze river, said that the dam was necessary for flood control, a state-run news agency reported Wednesday. The project would play "a major role in reducing floods on the Yangtze by the year 2003," parliamentary chief Li reportedly told a group of hydrologists. The statements marked the dam's first public defense by Li, widely seen as the project's founder, since China's worst floods in nearly half a decade spread destruction along the Yangtze river valley this summer. Critics of the project doubt the government's flood prevention claims, saying the scheme posed significant environmental dangers.
