Few issues display more clearly the competition between China’s drive to become economically developed and to conserve biodiversity than hydropower development. This is the subject of China’s most recent environmental controversy. In August 2003, the National Development and Reform Commission, a powerful economics super-ministry, authorized construction of a 13-station dam along the Nu1 River (Nujiang) in Yunnan Province. After at least a decade of construction, the dam would become the world’s largest. It would produce more electricity than the Three Gorges Dam, helping China address energy shortages while bringing jobs to poor residents of southwestern China and revenues to the provincial and local governments
