China to Build Huge Power Station on Lancang-Mekong River

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, January 20, 2002

China to Build Huge Power Station on Lancang-Mekong River

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In an effort to turn the international Lancang-Mekong River into a "golden watercourse", China has commenced building a hydro-electric power station on it, second in size only to the mammoth Three Gorges Power Project.

Situated in the middle reaches of the river within Yunnan Province, Xiaowan Hydropower Station will have a total installed generating capacity of 4.2 million kilowatts, bigger than the Ertan Hydropower Station on the Yalong River in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

The cost of the construction of the power station is estimated at 22.2 billion yuan, the ever largest amount to be spent on a project of this kind in Yunnan. It is scheduled to be completed in 2012.

The Lancang-Mekong River, known as the "Oriental Danube", is the only international river running through six Asian countries. It originates in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and runs for 4,880 km. through Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Xiaowan Power Station is one of the key projects to be built during China's Tenth Five-Year Plan period (2001-2005) and an important part of China's strategy for transmitting electricity from resources-rich western areas to power-short Shanghai Municipality, Guangdong, Jiangsu and other eastern provinces. While giving priority to power generation, the power station will perform other functions such as flood control, irrigation, sand retention and navigation.

Pan Jiazheng, a Chinese hydro-electric expert, said, " Establishment of the power station will benefit all countries along the river."

According to a memorandum signed between China and Thailand, power stations on the Lancang-Mekong river will start providing electricity to Thailand from 2013.

The Mekong River basin has 13.5 million hectares of cultivated land, which is prone to flooding in summer and lacks irrigation in winter.

When the Xiaowan Power Station starts operating, there will a reservoir with water storage of 15 billion cubic meters. This will reduce the amount of water flowing downward by 17 percent during flood seasons and increase the flow by 40 percent in dry seasons, says He Daming, director of the Asian International River Center affiliated to Yunnan University.

Construction of a 292-meter-high dam will block 35 percent of the silt now released into the lower reaches of the river. This will be advantageous to agricultural and fishery development in the northern part of Thailand and the Vientiane Plain and facilitates navigation on the Mekong River.

China and Laos organized trial shipping runs on the river in 1990. The river was opened up for commercial navigation simultaneously in China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand last June.

More than 38,000 people in the dam area, all of whom live in China, are to be relocated.

Reduction of silt in the river will be conducive to fish production in the lower reaches. A 300,000-square-kilometer reserve will be set up to protect macaque and other rare animals in the region.

"The experience of building power stations on international rivers has proved that they exert no negative influences on the environment," He Daming says.

Xiaowan Hydropower Station is the second of the eight hydro- electric power stations to be built on the Lancang-Mekong River and the largest water conservancy project in Yunnan in the past 50 years.

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