It is said by some to be on a scale to rival the Great Wall itself. When completed it will be twice as expensive as China's Three Gorges Dam. It's a massive re-engineering of the People's Republic of China. From the LA Times:
The Chinese government is planning to reroute the nation's water supply, bringing water from the flood plains of the south and the snowcapped mountains of the west to the parched capital of Beijing. First envisioned by Mao Tse-tung in the 1950s and now coming to fruition, the South-North Water
Diversion — as it is inelegantly known in English — has a price tag of more than $62 billion.
"This is on a par with the Great Wall, a project essential for the survival of China," said Wang Shushan, who heads the project in Henan province, where much of the construction is now taking place. "It is a must-do project. We can't afford to wait."
Unlike the slackers on Parliament Hill, the Chinese at least acknowledge what climate change is doing to their country and they're taking steps to adapt. It's too bad the petro-pols who make up the Tory and Liberal caucuses can't grasp that protecting Canada and Canadians, not lusting after filthy fossil fuel superpowerdom, is their first responsibility.
Even by the standards of a country where moving heaven and Earth is all in a day's work, it is a project of enormous hubris. In effect, the Chinese are "replumbing" the entire country, says Orville Schell, a China scholar and an environmentalist, something "no country has ever done successfully in the
past."
China is plagued by extreme weather. Vast river deltas in the south are inundated each year by deadly flooding, while the steppes of the north are swept by sandstorms. To remedy this, the engineers are creating a vast, hydra-like network of canals, tunnels and aqueducts that will extend thousands
of miles across the country.
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