>They didn’t seem to be building in a way to flush silt
Yeah, they also kicked out all the EU/US technicians when the techs told them the rebar they were using wasn’t enough and the cement needed to be seated deeper into the bedrock (as the dam’s built on a river delta).
One of the things I remember about how they prepared the damsite was how they cleared the overburden. A thousand or so gooks with shovels, picks, buckets, and water hoses worked for something like two years to get the loose stuff off. They made little ditches and ran water down them to carry the mud away from the digging.
Only after they got the loose stuff off did he chicoms suck it up and buy a dozen bigaxx Caterpillar D9’s to do the heavy moving.