Social Sciences Brown Bag

This is a past event.

Friday, April 12, 2019, 12 pm– 1 pm

This is a past event.

Please join us for the Social Sciences Brown Bag. Visiting scholar, Zhihui Zhang, will present:

Between Ideology and Technocracy: Decision-making about the Three Gorges Project, 1919 to 1992

This paper will review this decision-making from the earliest conception of building the Three Gorges Dam in 1919 through the early 1990s.

In 1919, Sun Yat-sen proposed building the dam to develop the hydraulic resources of the Yangtze River and improve shipping. Later in the 1940s the Nationalist Government tried to cooperate with the U.S. to build it. John Savage, an American engineer, proposed an initial hydropower development plan that couldn’t be implemented due to the Sino-Japanese War. After the PRC was established in 1949, the dam experienced twists and turns during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution movement. Then during the Reform and Opening under Deng Xaioping, an extensive and wide-ranging debate occurred involving many groups and individuals within the Chinese political system. Eventually, a construction resolution was passed through by National People's Congress in 1992.

The level of economic development within China was a constant factor in debates about the dam over this entire time. But the decision-making bodies and processes differed significantly. We will explore the place how much room in the political system was granted to the opinions and ideas of technical experts in the various water agencies.

Zhang is an associate researcher at the Institute of Natural History of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and  currently a visiting scholar in the Department of Social Sciences.

 
 

 

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