Great Wall Across the Yangtze directed by Ellen Perry, ITVS; www.shop.pbs.org, (800) 328-7271
Reviewed by Bob Schildgen
China is building a new Great Wall, a 650-foot-high, mile-and-a-half-wide dam across
the Yangtze River that will create a 350-mile-long artificial lake--and the plethora of
environmental problems that similar projects have caused around the world. Ellen Perry's
documentary, narrated by Martin Sheen, takes us on a tour through the river's dramatic
mountain slopes, forests, and archaeological and historic sites that will never be seen
again if the project is completed. Environmentalists interviewed warn that Siberian
cranes, baizi dolphins, river sturgeon, and finless porpoise and other species will face
extinction, with so much water impounded that the Yangtze might simply dry up many miles
from its estuary.
The dam will also take an immense human toll, as 1.3 million environmental refugees
will be displaced, their farmland and towns flooded away (see "No Place to Call
Home," page 66). Such problems, plus the devastation if the structure breaks during
an earthquake, have even driven the most fervent dam sponsors, including the U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation and the World Bank, to withdraw from the project.
Chinese engineers disagree, dismissing the hazards and touting the dam's environmental
benefits. Hydropower from the dam, they say, will help relieve China's deadly
air-pollution crisis by generating as much power as 50 million tons of coal a year, while
curbing CO2 emissions in the world's second-ranking source of greenhouse gases. Chinese
environmentalists like Dai Qing, however, who was sentenced to ten months in jail for
crusading against the dam, contend that there are less dangerous paths, as do her allies
in the International Rivers Network and other groups. But the worldwide anti-dam campaign
faces a difficult struggle against officials bent on rivaling ancient emperors for
public-works immortality.
