The Largest Irrigation Project

The Yangtze flows into the East China Sea and was navigable by ocean-going vessels up to a thousand miles from its mouth even before the Three Gorges Dam was built. As of June 2003, the Three Gorges Dam now spans the river, flooding Fengjie, the first of a number of towns affected by the massive flood control and power generation project. The project is the largest comprehensive irrigation project in the world. Proponents of the dam argue that it will free people living along the river from floods that have repeatedly threatened them in the past, and will also offer them electricity and water transport - though at the expense of permanently flooding many existing towns (including numerous ancient cultural relics) and causing large-scale changes in the local ecology.
Opponents of the dam point out that there are three different kinds of floods on the Yangtze River: floods which originate in the upper reaches, floods which originate in the lower reaches, and floods along the entire length of the river. They argue that the Three Gorges dam will actually make flooding in the upper reaches of the river worse and have little or no impact on floods which originate in the lower reaches. Twelve hundred years of low water marks on the river were recorded in the inscriptions and the carvings of carp at Baiheliang, now submerged.
The Yangtze River is flanked with metallurgical, power, chemical, auto, building materials and machinery industrial belts, and high-tech development zones. It is playing an increasingly crucial role in the river valley's economic growth and has become a vital link for international shipping to the inland provinces. The river is a major transportation artery for China connecting the interior with the coast. The Yangtze River is one of the world's busiest waterways. River traffic includes commercial traffic transporting bulk goods such as coal as well as manufactured goods and passengers. Cargo transportation on the Yangtze River reached 795 million tons in 2005 [1] [2]. River cruises of several days duration especially through the beautiful and scenic Three Gorges area are becoming popular as the tourism industry grows in China.