Since January 2018, many online media outlets have reported that Chinese engineers are planning to build a tunnel that is longer than 1000km to redirect 15 billion tons of water from the Yarlung Tsangpo River to the northwest, supposedly to make the Xinjiang desert bloom and transform it into China's California. This project is the hotly debated 'Hongqi River' Project (also known as 'Red Flag River' Project). This megaproject plans to cut through the Tibetan Plateau to build an extremely long underground tunnel that extends from the Tibetan Plateau to the Xinjiang region, the scale of which is equivalent to five times that of the Three Gorges Dam. This is the main idea underlying the 1 trillion RMB reverse-engineering "Hongqi River" project.
Since the initially announcement of the Hongqi River water diversion project, it has been a source of controversy in both academia and the media. Many proponents believe that the scale of the "Hongqi River" water transfer project will surpass the South-North Water Transfer Project, and supply as much as five times the amount of water supplied by the Three Gorges to transform Xinjiang into a Jiangnan Water Township. Some Western provinces and infrastructure state-owned enterprises are already in the process of inspecting the route. On the other hand, water experts have warned that if an inter-basin water transfer project of this scale is constructed in the Tibetan Plateau, which has been dubbed the "Water Tower of Asia," not only will it threaten the ecologically fragile plateau but it could also turn into an engineering disaster.
A megaproject like this simply reflects the hubristic attitude of "man over nature." Editor-in-Chief of Chinese National Geography Dan Zhiqiang has written an article that recounts several flopped mega engineering projects that were supposed to benefit humanity.
In 1964, the US engineering corporation Parsons proposed a water diversion project of enormous proportions—the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA). This megaproject was to divert water from northwestern Canada and Alaska to an 800km-long, 16km-wide, and 61m-deep dam in the Rocky Mountains before being channeled through a complicated water delivery network that was more than 10000km-long to reach the dry southwest of the USA and northern Mexico. All of this was for the purposes of integrating the North American continental water system. The NAWAPA also proposed the utilization of nuclear bombs to construct the dam and river ways. At that time, the estimated costs of the NAWAPA was estimated to be more than 100 billion USD—a figure that caused significant controversy in both the USA and Canada. Eventually, the enormous costs compounded by the ongoing Vietnam War led to the setting aside of the NAWAPA. Half a century since then, politicians and scientists alike have been urging the US government to restart the NAWAPA, but the support for the project has gradually diminished.
During the Cold War, the two superpowers of the USA and the Soviet Union signed a treaty to promote and develop nuclear explosions for peaceful purposes. Its underlying idea was that humankind could gain full control over nuclear power to the extent that it could be used for non-military purposes such as constructing canals and building dams. In 1953, the US Central Intelligence Agency likewise proposed the use of nuclear power for the purposes of diverting rivers to President Eisenhower. Under the leadership of Edward Teller, the "father of the hydrogen bomb," the US government came up with Operation Plowshare which saw to the successive detonation of 31 nuclear warheads in 27 test sites. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, completely skipped over the experimentation phase and went ahead to detonate a nuclear bomb in 1965 at what is known as the Chapayevka River basin in today's Kazakhstan, creating a circular "Chapayevka lake" as a result. However, because the radiation from the lake was too strong, the east of the lake has been laid to waste until today. In 1964, the German water expert and engineer Friedrich Basler likewise proposed the use of nuclear power to increase the efficiency of engineering projects. He then went on to come up with an even clearer plan to do so.
These megaprojects, which now seem completely incredible, nonetheless reflect what people conceived of at that time. The concept of high modernism, proposed by British Professor of Anthropology & Geography David Harvey, describes an ideology that is characterized firstly by an excessive worship of modernization and science and technology, and secondly by a strong conviction in linear progress, technological domination, rational planning, and an ideal society. Such an ideology is manifested as the propensity to use big projects not only to transform nature but also to manage society. Proponents of such an ideology are convinced that doing so will increase the overall welfare of humanity. Moreover, they have a blind ambition to regulate both nature and society that can be summed up as an attitude of "we can do it!", an attitude that in turn implies that whatever science and technology is capable of doing is whatever it should do.
Nonetheless, history has shown that high modernists have severe biases. For one, they fail to truly understand that human and nature are linked within an organic system. Secondly, the notion that humans can alter the course of nature has been proven to be blind and risky over and over again. In the last few decades, the environmentalist movement, ecologism, and the concept of sustainable development have forced the proponents of high modernism to reflect upon and rectify their conception of humankind's relationship with nature.
As an independent think tank, Anbound wants to point out that the planning and implementation of megaprojects such as those mentioned above must be more thoroughly thought out. This is primarily because such projects often, if not always, involve many different disciplines and spheres such as residents' interests, geology, geography, engineering and technology, natural resources and ecology, the humanities, economics, finance, regional development, security, national and local financial resources, etc. Therefore, it is crucial that when making decisions for such projects, one must be able to think in a transdisciplinary way to carry out research and evaluation. Moreover, the residents of the affected area must also be consulted. Should such processes be lacking, these megaprojects will only reflect the decisions of scientists and academicians—or the minority stakeholders—which is in fact highly irresponsible and unscientific. The point here is that scientific decision-making is not the same as decisions made by scientists. Regardless of how erudite a scientist is, in the face of a complex and immense problem, he or she will nonetheless have only a limited view and understanding of the issue. Consequently, any decisions made on that basis will also be hindered by such limitations.
Final Analysis and Conclusion:
The failure of numerous megaprojects throughout history has been a result not only of human short-sightedness but also the scientific decision-making process. To base a megaproject on the subjective conjectures of a few experts and scientists is an extremely risky undertaking, and China, which has had its fair share of experience in this arena, should be able to act rationally to circumvent such risks by now.
