Word: xiaowan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...workers, some wearing prison-labor uniforms, are toiling on a construction site of enormous proportions. In 2010, this remote section of the Mekong will be transformed into a placid reservoir, drowning the jagged gorges that now cradle the river. Constructed by the Huaneng Group, China's biggest power producer, Xiaowan dam is the nation's second-largest power project after the Three Gorges. As the biggest of the eight dams China plans for its portion of the Mekong, Xiaowan will dwarf the two hydropower projects that have already been built in Yunnan. Given that half the Mekong basin's water...
...many Chinese can't quite fathom the Mekong's importance to other countries. "This is our part of the river, so we should be able to do what we want with it," says Hu Tao, a geological engineer who has worked at Xiaowan for two years. "The other countries can do what they want with their sections of the river." In some ways, Hu's indifference is understandable. Roughly half the Mekong lies in China, but for most of that length its waters are too swift to support barge traffic or wide-scale fishing. (The Chinese name for the river...
...That sense of helplessness extends to many in Yunnan as well. The Xiaowan project has forced 35,000 people from their homes, often with minimal compensation. Wang Zhengjun was uprooted in 2004 from his farmland on the banks of the Mekong with only six months' notice. Although he was provided a new house by Huaneng, the 42-year-old says it's much smaller than his old one - and it doesn't come with the fertile soil that supported his family for generations. Villagers were told the dam would be a financial boon to local residents. But Wang and others...
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