I remember that before the decision to build the Three Gorges Dam, there was a discussion across the country about whether the dam should be built. Opinions for and against seem to be evenly matched, and neither can fully convince anyone. Finally, after a vote by the National People's Congress, the Three Gorges Dam was finally started.
Leaving aside its contribution to shipping and power generation, the role of the Three Gorges Dam is irreplaceable from the perspective of flood control and disaster reduction alone. Since ancient times, China has been deeply affected by floods and droughts, and for thousands of years it has relied on the sky to eat, and the biggest luxury of farmers is that the wind and rain will be smooth.
China's climate and precipitation are deeply affected by the southeast monsoon. If the warm and humid air flow in the Pacific Ocean is stronger, it will flood the north and drought in the south, and if it is too weak, it will flood the north and the south. There are too few years when there are no strong or weak, and there are no disasters in the north and south.
Most of China's major rivers originate in the western plateau and flow eastward into the sea. If the precipitation exceeds the standard, after thousands of kilometers of accumulation of watersheds, it will cause a very large flood situation in the middle and lower reaches. Once the embankment was broken, the thousand-mile plain became a zealous country, and the losses were extremely tragic.
Some people say that the Chinese nation was formed in the water. The earliest Dayu, the flood he faced was obviously nationwide, and there were no decent and systematic embankments and flood control projects at that time. It is estimated that major rivers such as the Yellow River and the Yangtze River have been flooded.
In addition to using the method of evacuation to find a way for the flood, it is more important to mobilize the manpower and material resources of various tribes to dig ditches and build levees. It is in this kind of overall, large-scale labor that the scattered tribes realize that only by uniting can they fight against nature and their lives will be better off. Thus, the state was established, and Dayu and his son founded the xia dynasty, the first dynasty in China.
Since then, disaster prevention and relief have been the main work of various dynasties. The emperor has a very important duty, every spring when the ploughing is opened, communicate with the heavens, hoping that the country can adjust the wind and rain this year, and the grain will be abundant. In case the heavens did not do this errand well, the emperor would personally go on stage to pray for rain or something, and remind the heavens.
Despite this, disasters of all kinds are still frequent, with the Yellow River breaking its banks more than 1,500 times in more than 2,000 years, and the one in 1117 drowned more than 1 million people. The Yangtze, Huai, and Pearl rivers all flood every few years. It can be said that these great rivers have given birth to the Chinese nation and have also harmed countless beings at the water's edge.
In China's long history, the continuation of a dynasty is often determined by the level of its response to disasters. Because after the catastrophe, hundreds of people are displaced, have no food or clothing, and the slightest disturbance will turn into a destructive revolt of displaced people.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Li Zicheng rebelled, and was repeatedly beaten by the officials and troops, and sometimes only a few hundred people remained in the rebel army. But as long as they find a way to enter the new disaster area, they can immediately make a comeback and grow to tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. This is because the Ming government has lost the ability to provide disaster relief, and the victims should give up their lives instead of starving to death.
Relatively speaking, the Song Dynasty did a relatively good job in this regard, whenever a catastrophe occurred, the Song Dynasty would recruit young and middle-aged people from the disaster victims to become soldiers, first, to appease the disaster victims, after becoming a soldier, they did not worry about food and clothing, and the family members more or less had a little settlement fee; second, to weaken the riot and organizational ability of the disaster victims, and could not form a hazard.
From the perspective of the entire history of China, large-scale floods and droughts are crises of the ruling class, and disaster relief and relief require a lot of financial and material resources, which will have an adverse impact on national defense. If the ruling class is unwilling to give even this money, or has no money at all, then wait for the peasant revolt.
Thus, in ancient times, a law was formed, and after the great catastrophe, the enemy countries took the opportunity to launch an attack. Generally, after the imperial court learned of the occurrence of a major disaster among the people, in addition to arranging disaster relief and relief, it would immediately notify the border guards to strengthen vigilance to prevent the enemy countries from taking advantage of the fire and looting.
In 1931, there was another major flood in the Yangtze River Basin. At the beginning of August, most of Wuhan was flooded, affecting the entire middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, while major rivers such as the HuaiHe River and the Yellow River were flooded, causing at least 400,000 casualties, affecting a population of 50 million to 60 million, and 150 million mu of farmland. In addition to the heavy precipitation this year, the reason for this has a lot to do with the fact that from the end of the Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, the country has been in war and chaos, and it is unable to repair and improve water conservancy projects. Just when the land of China was in misery, someone really came to take advantage of the fire and loot.
There are a large number of Chinese in the Japanese army, and they know a lot about Chinese history. When the Chinese government spent one-seventh of its financial expenditure on disaster relief and was in a hurry, the Japanese soldiers launched the September 18 Incident.
Just eight years ago, in 1923, a powerful earthquake struck the Kanto region of Japan, killing at least 150,000 people and losing more than two million people to their homes.
What was the first thing China thought about after learning about the disaster in Japan at that time? Aid, national fundraising assistance, and immediately sent over 300,000 stones of rice, followed by money, personnel and other kinds of assistance (such as 10,000 packs of flour, medical teams, etc.), to know that at that time, the relationship between the two countries was extremely tense due to the Lushun issue, but China still had no hesitation in choosing aid.
The millennium's kindness did not stop Japan's aggressive nature of taking advantage of the fire and robbery during the Disaster in China, and those Japanese Chinese soldiers believed that China was bound by the flood and would try to avoid the expansion of the situation, so that it was possible to succeed. Unfortunately, they were right, and the entire three eastern provinces were easily occupied by them.
Therefore, the Three Gorges Dam is not only a water conservancy project, but also an infrastructure related to the fate of the country. Its role in flood prevention and disaster reduction is enormous, and its contribution to the Chinese nation is immeasurable in its ability to minimize the probability of flood and drought disasters.
[References: "Great Kanto Earthquake", "1931 Jianghuai Flood", "September 18 Incident"]