4 ideas
In August 1975 Typhoon Nina dropped extreme rainfall on Henan, and the Banqiao and Shimantan reservoirs failed. Tens of thousands died in the flood, many more died in the epidemics and famine that followed, and the disaster was treated as a state secret for about twenty years.
The dam network that failed at Banqiao was built under a political doctrine that put storing water ahead of passing floods. Hydrologists who argued for more spillway and sluice capacity were sidelined or had their designs cut back. The engineering risk therefore came from a political hierarchy that punished dissenting technical judgment, not from ignorance.
When a state classifies its own infrastructure disasters, the evidence most relevant to the next megaproject never reaches the people evaluating it. Suppressing Banqiao let Three Gorges advocates present large-dam safety as settled. Censorship does more than hide past mistakes; it systematically distorts future risk assessment.
The essays argue that relocating over a million reservoir residents was planned on paper figures that ignored scarce arable land, diverted compensation funds and weak local accountability. Displaced farmers were pushed onto steep, poor uplands, which led to erosion and impoverishment. Official cost-benefit totals leave these costs out because the people bearing them have no voice in the approval process.