China is top dam builder, going where others won't
By Denis D. Gray and Elaine Kurtenbach, AP, Dec 19, 2012
TATAY RIVER, Cambodia (AP)--Up a sweeping jungle valley in a remote corner of Cambodia, Chinese engineers and workers are raising a 100-meter- (330-foot-) high dam over the protests of villagers and activists. Only Chinese companies are willing to tame the Tatay and other rivers of Koh Kong province, one of Southeast Asia's last great wilderness areas.
It's a scenario that is hardly unique. China's giant state enterprises and banks have completed, are working on or are proposing some 300 dams from Algeria to Myanmar.
Poor countries contend the dams are crucial to bringing electricity to tens of millions who live without it and boosting living standards. Environmental activists and other opponents counter that China, the world's No. 1 dam builder, is willing and able to go where most Western companies, the World Bank and others won't tread anymore because of environmental, social, political or financing concerns.
"China is the one financier able to provide money for projects that don't meet international standards," said Ian Baird, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin who has worked in Southeast Asia for decades. "You go to China if you want to have them financed."
Viewed by some in the developing world as essential icons of progress, dams in countries as far apart as Ecuador, Myanmar and Zambia have spearheaded or reinforced China's rising economic might around the world. They are tied to or put up in tandem with other infrastructure projects and businesses, and power generation equipment ranks as China's second-largest export earner after electrical machinery and equipment.
China, the world's largest producer of hydropower, has honed its dam building skills at home, but experts say that its companies build to varying levels of quality abroad depending on what the clients demand.
"My sense is that when the Chinese build a dam overseas, they give you the standards (the local officials) insist on," said Kenneth Pomeranz, an expert on water issues at the University of Chicago. "When governments say, 'We want it done right,' they know how to do that too."
