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DAM-L Washington Post: Chinese Workers Killed at 3G Dam / letter to Ed. (fwd)
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Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 13:36:45 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: Washington Post: Chinese Workers Killed at 3G Dam / letter to Ed.
Sender: owner-irn-three-gorges@netvista.net
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Dear Editor,
Your article "Chinese Workers Killed at Three Gorges Dam" (Sept 6, 2000) gives a useful analysis of the construction problems, political tension, corruption and human rights abuses caused by China's Three Gorges Dam.
But there is another element to this story that readers should be aware of: the role of Wall Street in bankrolling the dam. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter's joint venture, China International Capital Corporation, has served as the project's advisor on raising overseas capital for the dam. In 1997 and 1999, Wall Street institutions underwrote over $830 million in bonds for the China Development Bank, which lists its largest client as the Three Gorges Dam Corporation.
By financing the project, U.S. banks are aiding in the world's largest displacement of people. Officials have the impossible task of resettling up to 1.9 million people. All dissent in China against the project is stifled; citizens who have dared to speak out are harassed or imprisoned. After reviewing the project's environmental and social impacts, the US Export-Import Bank and US Bureau of Reclamation pulled out of the project. The World Bank, the leading funder of large dams around the world, has also declined to participate.
Until Morgan Stanley Dean Witter implements necessary environmental and social policies governing core business operations, International Rivers Network is spearheading a consumer boycott of the firm's Discover Card. Financial institutions don't deserve our business if they don't take responsibility for their environmental and social impacts.
Doris Shen
Program Officer
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way
Berkeley, CA 94703
t: 510-848-1155 ext. 317
--
To view the entire article, go to http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23514-2000Sep6.html
Chinese Workers Killed At Three Gorges Dam
BEIJING, Sept. 6, 2000
A conveyor belt from an American-built tower crane fell more than 60 feet onto a group of Chinese workers at the controversial Three Gorges Dam project, killing three and injuring 30, the Chinese press reported. News of the accident, which occurred Sunday night, marked the first time that China's official press has reported fatalities associated with the project. The massive $24 billion enterprise--seeking to harness the Yangtze River in central China--has become politically sensitive, generating widespread criticism that it could endanger the environment, is displacing a million people and has been surrounded by official corruption.
Reports from newspapers in the nearby city of Chongqing, 800 miles west of Shanghai, and from the semi-official China News Service said work on a section of the project has been halted and that officials from the State Council, the China National Power Corp. and Hubei province have rushed to the scene. Chinese media identified the machine as a tower crane produced by Rotec Industrial Inc., based in Elmhurst, Ill.
Robert Oury, Rotec's chief executive officer, said the machine involved in the accident is one of four combination crane and conveyor belt towers working on the dam, purchased from Rotec for more than $8 million. It has been on the site for 14 months, conveying and pouring concrete almost around the clock, he said in a telephone interview.
Oury said that after a serious problem with a bearing, Chinese technicians took part of the machine to the ground to repair it. As they sought to reassemble the conveyor belt that rises up the structure, parts of it fell to the ground, hitting the workers, he said."We have never had a fatality with another crane," he said. "We need to figure out what happened and how to prevent it from happening again."
The deaths are part of a growing list of problems for the dam, one of the world's biggest engineering projects. In the past year, for instance, China's tightly controlled press has reported a series of corruption scandals associated with the project.The reports have catalogued more than $81 million in embezzlement. In 1998 alone, $57 million was stolen from a fund to relocate more than 1 million people from areas that will be flooded by the dam, they disclosed. Another $24 million was filched by a contractor who imported hundreds of used trucks, bulldozers, excavator and loading vehicles but charged his buyers as if they were new, the reports said.
The Three Gorges project also has been plagued by criticism from environmentalists and economists. It was forced through parliament in the late 1980s and early 1990s mainly by then-Prime Minister Li Peng, a onetime official in the department of water works.When it is finished sometime in the next 10 years, the dam will create a 400-mile-long reservoir near the industrial metropolis of Chongqing, home to more than 20 million people. The 600-foot-high, 1.2-mile-wide dam will submerge two cities, 11 county seats and 114 towns. The dam is flooding hundreds of ancient temples and other historic sites. And it risks dealing a final blow to the Yangtze, which over the years has grown more and more polluted because little heed has been paid to environmental costs during China's breakneck economic development.
Economists lately have joined the fray. Yuan Guolin, who had been the deputy general manager of the China Yangtze River Three Gorges Project Development Corp., said earlier this year that a review was needed on whether the project would be able to sell all its output after it begins generation in 2003.3. Despite the criticism, the project has gone ahead. In July, the government announced it had sold $365 million worth of 10-year bonds to cover gaps in the dam's funding. Earlier this week, the government announced plans to issue bonds worth $6 billion. Some of that money could go into the dam as well.
Chinese analysts have said Li, despite his reduced stature, remains influential within the upper reaches of China's government and the Communist Party. In an interview Monday with an American-based Chinese language newspaper, Li for the first time acknowledged that corruption was a concern but insisted the dam will go ahead.
Researcher Robert Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.
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Subject: Washington Post: Chinese Workers Killed at 3G Dam / letter to Ed.
Dear Editor,
Your article "Chinese Workers Killed at Three Gorges Dam" (Sept 6, 2000) gives a useful analysis of the construction problems, political tension, corruption and human rights abuses caused by China's Three Gorges Dam.
But there is another element to this story that readers should be aware of: the role of Wall Street in bankrolling the dam. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter's joint venture, China International Capital Corporation, has served as the project's advisor on raising overseas capital for the dam. In 1997 and 1999, Wall Street institutions underwrote over $830 million in bonds for the China Development Bank, which lists its largest client as the Three Gorges Dam Corporation.
By financing the project, U.S. banks are aiding in the world's largest displacement of people. Officials have the impossible task of resettling up to 1.9 million people. All dissent in China against the project is stifled; citizens who have dared to speak out are harassed or imprisoned. After reviewing the project's environmental and social impacts, the US Export-Import Bank and US Bureau of Reclamation pulled out of the project. The World Bank, the leading funder of large dams around the world, has also declined to participate.
Until Morgan Stanley Dean Witter implements necessary environmental and social policies governing core business operations, International Rivers Network is spearheading a consumer boycott of the firm's Discover Card. Financial institutions don't deserve our business if they don't take responsibility for their environmental and social impacts.
Doris Shen
Program Officer
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way
Berkeley, CA 94703
t: 510-848-1155 ext. 317
--
To view the entire article, go to http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23514-2000Sep6.html
Chinese Workers Killed At Three Gorges Dam
BEIJING, Sept. 6, 2000
A conveyor belt from an American-built tower crane fell more than 60 feet onto a group of Chinese workers at the controversial Three Gorges Dam project, killing three and injuring 30, the Chinese press reported. News of the accident, which occurred Sunday night, marked the first time that China's official press has reported fatalities associated with the project. The massive $24 billion enterprise--seeking to harness the Yangtze River in central China--has become politically sensitive, generating widespread criticism that it could endanger the environment, is displacing a million people and has been surrounded by official corruption.
Reports from newspapers in the nearby city of Chongqing, 800 miles west of Shanghai, and from the semi-official China News Service said work on a section of the project has been halted and that officials from the State Council, the China National Power Corp. and Hubei province have rushed to the scene. Chinese media identified the machine as a tower crane produced by Rotec Industrial Inc., based in Elmhurst, Ill.
Robert Oury, Rotec's chief executive officer, said the machine involved in the accident is one of four combination crane and conveyor belt towers working on the dam, purchased from Rotec for more than $8 million. It has been on the site for 14 months, conveying and pouring concrete almost around the clock, he said in a telephone interview.
Oury said that after a serious problem with a bearing, Chinese technicians took part of the machine to the ground to repair it. As they sought to reassemble the conveyor belt that rises up the structure, parts of it fell to the ground, hitting the workers, he said."We have never had a fatality with another crane," he said. "We need to figure out what happened and how to prevent it from happening again."
The deaths are part of a growing list of problems for the dam, one of the world's biggest engineering projects. In the past year, for instance, China's tightly controlled press has reported a series of corruption scandals associated with the project.The reports have catalogued more than $81 million in embezzlement. In 1998 alone, $57 million was stolen from a fund to relocate more than 1 million people from areas that will be flooded by the dam, they disclosed. Another $24 million was filched by a contractor who imported hundreds of used trucks, bulldozers, excavator and loading vehicles but charged his buyers as if they were new, the reports said.
The Three Gorges project also has been plagued by criticism from environmentalists and economists. It was forced through parliament in the late 1980s and early 1990s mainly by then-Prime Minister Li Peng, a onetime official in the department of water works.When it is finished sometime in the next 10 years, the dam will create a 400-mile-long reservoir near the industrial metropolis of Chongqing, home to more than 20 million people. The 600-foot-high, 1.2-mile-wide dam will submerge two cities, 11 county seats and 114 towns. The dam is flooding hundreds of ancient temples and other historic sites. And it risks dealing a final blow to the Yangtze, which over the years has grown more and more polluted because little heed has been paid to environmental costs during China's breakneck economic development.
Economists lately have joined the fray. Yuan Guolin, who had been the deputy general manager of the China Yangtze River Three Gorges Project Development Corp., said earlier this year that a review was needed on whether the project would be able to sell all its output after it begins generation in 2003.3. Despite the criticism, the project has gone ahead. In July, the government announced it had sold $365 million worth of 10-year bonds to cover gaps in the dam's funding. Earlier this week, the government announced plans to issue bonds worth $6 billion. Some of that money could go into the dam as well.
Chinese analysts have said Li, despite his reduced stature, remains influential within the upper reaches of China's government and the Communist Party. In an interview Monday with an American-based Chinese language newspaper, Li for the first time acknowledged that corruption was a concern but insisted the dam will go ahead.
Researcher Robert Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.
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