The Jinghong Dam on the Lancang River, in Yunnan Province (Photo credit: Internet)
A paper written by several Chinese domestic scholars titled “Study on the economic profit and loss of hydropower energy base construction based on different stakeholders – taking the main stream of Lancang River as an example” has sparked a hot debate because the paper for the first time divides different stakeholders into four groups to illustrate the cost-benefit analysis of different stakeholders of hydropower projects with data. Dr. Wang Weiluo, a water expert living in Germany, explained to us on the 18th that the real benefits of the Lancang River hydropower development project, which is even crazier than the Three Gorges Project, are divided into four groups.
In his paper “Study on the economic benefits and losses of hydropower base construction based on different stakeholders – the example of Lancang River main stream”, he divided the different stakeholders into four groups: first, development enterprises; second, basin governments; third, migrant farmers; and fourth, global stakeholders, and discussed and compared them. According to Dr. Wang, the value of the paper is that It points out that rural migrants are the direct losers in the entire Lancang River hydropower development process, which is something that no other paper in China has written about so directly.
The article gives you a specific figure that he calculated. That is, you invest 1.5, and finally get back 1 yuan, while the state power enterprises it is to invest 1 yuan to earn 4 yuan. The government is to invest 1 yuan to earn 3 yuan, only farmers he is to invest 1.5 to earn 1 yuan, is a loss of 50 cents, so they are a loser. So what is his loss, mainly from the simple compensation subsidy to him. Why? Because he is a farming family by four people, he compensation is he relocated the house ah, the last only sixty square meters of floor space, that is, an average of each rural relocation of people, he can get the size of this housing is 15 square meters. The average rural population in China is now 48.9 square meters, so the farmer is actually a loser in the whole process.
Dr. Wang explained that the development companies referred to in the paper are the state-owned power companies, and that the investment in the 19-stage hydropower station on the main stream of the Lancang River by the state-owned power development companies in China is a lucrative one, with a profit of 3.93 dollars per dollar. He will disregard the interests of Chinese people and Chinese people’s future generations, he will desperately develop this Chinese hydropower resources, in fact, is in the destruction.
In fact, the monopoly on the development of hydropower in the Lancang River is Huaneng Hydropower, who used to be the boss of Huaneng Hydropower, Li Peng’s oldest son, Li Xiaopeng, who is the boss of Huaneng Hydropower. China’s hydropower development, I wrote an article before, called the “horse race”, that is to say, China’s major state-owned power companies, they divided their own sphere of influence, divided their own sphere of influence, then Huaneng it is more divided, Huaneng to the Lancang River, such as the Yarlung Tsangpo River part, but Huaneng can’t develop the upper reaches of the Yellow River, which is not under his development, so each state-owned power company has its own sphere of influence, and it has divided the hydropower in China.
The paper also calculated that the benefit of the Lancang River hydropower development project is followed by the basin government, Dr. Wang Weiluo said, the paper when the benefit to cost ratio of state-owned power companies is 3.93 to 1.0, the basin government is the local government, the benefit to cost ratio is 3.10 to 1.0. state-owned power companies and local governments have the same interests, which has the collusion between government and business in hydropower development.
So, in the development of hydropower in China, especially in the development of hydropower in western China, you can see such a situation, that is, the combination of government and business, the combination of government and business, state-owned power enterprises and local governments colluded together, and the local government is very active, the local government is very active, they will participate in the project to force the local residents to be able to Here they do not talk about what they get the GDP of the economic development which something, to their officials of the benefits of this promotion, but only to the economic interests of the local government, he is to invest 1 yuan to earn 3 yuan so a.
Dr. Wang believes that the paper has a lot of room for improvement, such as the fourth group of so-called global stakeholders, which does not include the people of the lower Mekong River basin in the project stakeholders to be considered.
The weakness of his paper is also in the last part of the global stakeholders, which he counts as a beneficiary. And he just happened to take into account the loss of these people in the Mekong River basin downstream of the Lancang River. The Mekong River has been ranked as one of the largest rivers in the world in terms of water use conflicts. Less, then, making their living standards fell, and China it is only, it only considered his own upstream of this interest. So now these reports say that because of the construction of hydropower upstream, a lot of sediment, a lot of nutrients are intercepted in the upstream reservoirs, so the downstream of this fish production is greatly reduced. Some sources say it has been reduced by one-third, some say it has been reduced by two-thirds. In short, it means that the people in the Mekong River basin are the victims, and they are not included in the calculation.
Dr. Wang also pointed out that the Chinese Communist Party always says that it represents the interests of all people in China, and that there are no different groups of interests, but this paper shows that the rural migrants are the biggest victims of the Lancang River Hydropower Development Project. The party leadership is often a group with different interests from the grassroots.
Recent Comments