Part Four: Water power development

Currently, there are 87,000 reservoirs in China with an annual capacity to supply 240 billion cubic meters of water, accounting for 37 percent of national water supply. By the end of October 2009, the effective irrigation area reached 877 million Chinese acres, which accounted for one fifth of the world total and ranked the first in the world. By the end of 2010, the annual capacity to generate electricity by water power was 721 billion KWHs.

In a project that ran from 1932 to 1937, China cut off flow of water on the upper reaches of Haihe River to clean up sewage. This photo shows the construction of a water control gate at Longfeng River that is part of Haihe River. [Photo/All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese and China Intercontinental Press]

The Xiaolangdi Dam is a dam in Jiyuan, Henan Province, China, and impounds the Yellow River. It is mainly for flood control, ice jam flood control and sewage reduction, as well as for water supply, irrigation and electricity generation.

The dam is 154 m tall and 1,317 m wide. Its total storage capacity is 12.65 billion cubic meters, of which 7.55 billion cubic meters are inactive and 5.1 billion cubic meters are active.

The facility has a total installed capacity of 1,836 MW and generates up to 5.1 TWh annually with the help of six 306 MW turbines. [Photo/All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese and China Intercontinental Press]

The Three Gorges Dam is a hydroelectric dam that spans the Yangtze River by the town of Sandouping, located in the Yiling District of Yichang, in Hubei province, China. Made of concrete, the dam is 2,335 m long, and the level of the dam top is 185 metres above sea level. It has 32 main turbines and each turbine has a capacity of 700 MW. The Three Gorges Dam is the world's largest power station in terms of installed capacity. [Photo/All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese and China Intercontinental Press]

Workers busy at the construction site to build a tunnel crossing the Yellow River, as part of the South-to-North Water Diversion project. [Photo/All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese and China Intercontinental Press]