When the Wuhan pandemic was first revealed, at the beginning of 2020, many were moved to wonder if it was going to be the Chinese Communist Party’s Chernobyl moment. The Chernobyl disaster and the even more disastrous attempts at cover-up by the Soviets were so egregious that the communists were once-and-for-all stripped of what little legitimacy they could claim.
So far, the Xi regime has managed to lie and bully its way out of the Wuhan disaster. But that’s only the first challenge to the Chinese communists’ legitimacy that 2020 has thrown up.
Located on the Yangtze River, China’s Three Gorges dam was officially completed in 2006. Apart from being the world’s largest hydro- power project, its primary purpose is to protect millions of people from the periodic flooding in the Yangtze Basin. Now, following rains not seen in 70 years, Chinese social media is questioning its safety.
One of the main reasons that Chernobyl was a death-blow to the Soviet Union was because the communists had spent so long touting its supposed superiority in science and engineering. Chernobyl brutally exposed what everyone knew but couldn’t say: Soviet technology was clunky and shoddy. Safety and efficiency played a long second to expediency and cronyism.
The Three Gorges dam may yet do the same to the CCP.
Former Premier Zhu Rongji warned many dams and flood dykes on the Yangtze River were as ‘flimsy and porous as tofu dregs’, while a 2011 government report claimed more than 40,000 dams in China were at risk of breach.
These days, criticism of the Three Gorges project is forbidden. Chinese authorities maintain the dam is structurally sound and, as its design, construction, and quality inspections were all carried out by the same group, who’s to argue? However, after repeated denials, Beijing recently admitted the wall has ‘leaked, moved and distorted’. A break would spell China’s Chernobyl moment.
The Three Gorges project was also riddled with cronyism.
It is plausible because during construction there were nearly a hundred reported instances of corruption, bribery and embezzlement, including 16 cases directly related to construction. The dam’s principal sponsor, former Premier Li Peng, used his position to appoint relatives to senior positions in the construction company. On completion and, with several hundred thousand forcibly relocated inhabitants denied their full resettlement entitlements, Li’s family ended up controlling 15 per cent of China’s power generation industry.
With examples like that, it’s not surprising that a government which preaches, ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ is distrusted.
This is where the Three Gorges stands to deal a mortal blow at the communist behemoth. China’s citizens have, so far, proven themselves willing to endure the heavy yoke of communism just so long as the trade-off is the promised “harmonious society”.
But if the Chinese no longer trust the regime to hold up its end of the deal, all bets are off.
There have been tremors in the past: the tainted milk scandal and others outraged many Chinese. A subversive cartoon, “Little Rabbit, Be Good”/“Kuang Kuang’s Dream”, outraged Beijing with its portrayal of long-suffering rabbits finally rising up against the brutal tigers when their babies are killed by poisoned milk (even now, it’s unlisted on YouTube).
The Three Gorges project is a fitting metaphor for today’s China. Full of promise and fanfare at the time, it has failed to deliver the key objective of flood mitigation. Xi may cling to Marxist-Leninist teachings and rule like an emperor with the Mandate of Heaven of ‘Old China’, but he cannot deny since the 1970s, China’s wealth gap has increased by more than 50 per cent and continues to widen. This breach of trust between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people, leaves Xi Jinping, like the dam, on shaky ground.
The excellent fantasy novel set in Imperial China, Bridge of Birds, contains the observation that emperors might ban swords and spears, but they cannot eradicate bamboo – and a million peasants with sharpened sticks are enough to give any emperor pause. If China is beset with another disaster of the CCP’s making, Xi better watch out for peasants with sticks, harmonious society be damned.
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