'The Yellow River Comes from Our Hands': Silt, Hydroelectricity, and the Sanmenxia Dam, 1929-1973

Abstract

Focusing on the planning and construction of the Sanmenxia hydropower project, this article analyzes the dynamics and tensions between energy demand and the nature of the Yellow River in the twentieth century. Since the late 1920s, Japanese engineers aimed to develop hydroelectric power by building dams on the Yellow River. They viewed the Yellow River as an important source of hydroelectric power for building the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. When the Chinese Communists took control, they claimed that the primary function of the Sanmenxia project was flood control. Yet, with the influences from the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist state's industrialization efforts, the engineers also emphasized the generation of electrical power, which resulted in a high dam design. The silting of the reservoir, however, frustrated the ambition of the Chinese leaders and engineers and resulted in the production of much lower and unstable power output upon the dam's completion.

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“…As a result, many Chinese ink paintings were created depicting the Sanmenxia hydropower project. As the first mega concrete dam on the Yellow River and the only hydropower project receiving Soviet assistance in the First Five-Year-Plan, Sanmenxia became a national focus for state propaganda (Ding 2021). Many Chinese painters across the country were organised by their work units to visit the dam site.…”

The social life of sediment

“…Likewise, Ling Zhang's history of the Yellow River avulsion event in 1048 CE devotes considerable attention to sedimentation processes, their causes and consequences, and the attempts to manage them (Zhang 2016). Ding (2020) and Muscolino (2020) have described how sediment availability became a target of state-led management strategies to counter erosion, explicitly targeted at reducing sedimentation of the Yellow River's lower reaches and of its reservoirs. Like other social scientists, historians of the Bengal delta and its rivers have also explicitly discussed sediment.…”