In the mountainous heart of China, where mist coils over riverbanks and the Yangtze has carved its path for millennia, a human-made giant now stands guard. Stretching across the mighty river’s flow is the Three Gorges Dam—a structure so vast and powerful, it has literally changed the way the Earth spins.
It sounds like science fiction, but it’s fact. The sheer mass of the dam’s reservoir—over 39 trillion kilograms of water—has subtly redistributed the planet’s weight, lengthening Earth’s rotation by 0.06 microseconds. That’s right: building a dam shifted the rhythm of the world.
This isn’t just one of the largest hydroelectric projects ever attempted—it’s a landmark in human ambition. A monument to what happens when engineering meets enormity.
Powering a Nation
Each year, the Three Gorges Dam produces around 95 terawatt-hours of electricity. To put that into perspective, it could power the entire country of Austria for a year—or supply roughly 3% of China’s enormous energy demand. Fueled by the relentless movement of water, it has helped reduce the country’s dependence on coal and cut down millions of tons of carbon emissions.
The dam’s impact on energy and industry is undeniable. But behind the glowing numbers lies a more complicated story—one of sacrifice, transformation, and irreversible change.
A Submerged Past
To make way for the dam’s immense reservoir, China relocated more than 1.3 million people. That’s more than the population of Prague, of Adelaide, or of San Diego. It meant moving entire families, dismantling communities, and rewriting lives. In total, 13 cities, 140 towns, and over 1,300 villages were lost beneath rising waters.
With them went thousands of years of cultural heritage—ancient temples, ancestral homes, burial grounds, and historical landmarks now lie submerged. Archaeologists scrambled to preserve what they could, but time and water swallowed much of what remained.
The human cost of the dam is one of the largest and most controversial displacement efforts in modern history. For many, it was a future promised at the expense of a past erased.
Nature Rewritten
The Yangtze River is more than a body of water—it’s an ecosystem, a lifeline, a story written by time. Altering its course has had deep consequences.
Since the dam’s completion, scientists have tracked increased landslides, changes in sediment flow, and a rise in earthquake activity in the surrounding region. The river’s altered rhythm has also devastated species that depended on its flow. Most famously, the baiji, or Chinese river dolphin—a creature once seen as a sacred guardian—has vanished, declared extinct in the wake of the dam’s construction.
Meanwhile, the reservoir’s vast, still waters have become a repository for industrial runoff and human waste, threatening both aquatic life and drinking water for millions downstream.
A Monument of Marvel and Moral Complexity
The Three Gorges Dam is often hailed as a marvel of modern engineering—and rightfully so. It holds back one of the world’s longest rivers, tames floods that once devastated the region, and provides clean energy on an unprecedented scale.
But it’s also a mirror—a reflection of what happens when human ambition collides with natural order. It forces us to ask: What are we willing to trade for progress? What does it mean to move mountains, if we must bury cultures to do it?
Like all extraordinary achievements, its legacy is layered. It is at once triumphant and tragic, a symbol of innovation and a cautionary tale. As the world races to build bigger, faster, cleaner, the story of the Three Gorges Dam stands as a reminder: true progress isn’t just about power—it’s about balance.
