Why China’s catastrophic floods will barely dent its economy

Good observations. I’m doubtful of the alarm about Three Gorges. It appears to me to have very little flood pool and is more a run of the river type project with power generation falling in the drier periods of year indicating no real storage.

I admit not knowing the difference in normal pool and conservation and flood pool levels for this facility. I have not seen them published. I do know that water is short enough to make the single direction mutually supporting locks and the ship lift a benefit in water conservation.

At least the coolies don’t have to pull the boats up river any more. Do they?

Grady McGregor grew up in Bejing, China, lived in Jordan as a writer focused upon the Arabic—Chinese interaction. Seems to be in the camp favorable toward China’s ambitions. Father operates business ventures under Chinese partnerships.

He has written prior articles about China’s poor food supply organization as a prime contributing factor toward rampant disease. Does it seem he recognizes a problem with the arable lands suffering flood this year? Everything is looking good?

We’ll see how this plays out, but I suspect that the dam is more solid than the liberal media’s portrayal would have anyone think. The Yangtze River is well-known for repeated inundations killing large numbers of people long before this dam was built. An example from almost a century ago, as well as a blurb on its tendency to overfill its banks at unpredictable intervals:

My understanding of the issue here is that the dam was designed to hold the monsoon floodwaters, and then slowly release them during the dry season. Electric generation was halfwhat added bonus, not the reason for the dam. But this year's rains have been way more than usual, both above and below the Three Gorges, to where other dams/levees have been compromised.

The issue this time is that the lower parts of the river are flooded from rain falling in their area, not floodwaters coming down the river. So large areas are already flooded, with much of that being China's main farmland (65% of it is along the Yangtze I believe?). So any dam releases aren't just flowing down the river like they normally would, they're hitting areas that are already under floodwaters.

And, if the dam breaks, it doesn;t just flow out in a 55mi radius. it follows the river mostly, and floods harder closer to that path. Plus those areas are already flooded, PLUS the dam is then no longer there to hold another month of two of the regular floodwaters coming down the river, that it usually would. So your limited flood math needs to add a bunch of water already there, as well as a bunch of water for the rest of monsoon season. What is that going to do to China's food production?

On top of all that, apparently China's far north is having severe drought, hurting even more farmland up there. The west/SW side is where the locust hordes are moving in. And, China recently culled 1/3-1/2 of their pig population, and have had several big chicken culls recently as well.

Sure, their industrial areas might do all right if enough of them survive the floodwaters, but China's gonna be hurting for food after all this. Sure, the dam breaking might take out a couple million mouths, but it'll hurt the farmland even more.

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