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submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

China has demolished 300 dams and shut down most of the small hydropower stations on a major tributary of the upper Yangtze River to safeguard fish populations as part of an effort to restore the ecology of Asia’s longest waterway.

According to a report by the state news agency Xinhua on Monday, 300 of the 357 dams on Chishui He – also known as the Red River – had been dismantled by the end of December 2024. In addition, 342 out of 373 small hydropower stations have been decommissioned, enabling many rare fish species to resume their natural reproductive cycles, the Xinhua report said.

The Red River flows for more than 400km (249 miles) through the southwestern provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan. It is regarded by ecologists as the last refuge for rare and endemic fish species in the Yangtze’s upper reaches.

Over the decades, water flows have been increasingly blocked by the dense network of hydropower stations and dams, restricting water volumes downstream and occasionally even causing some sections to dry up entirely.

This has drastically reduced the amount of suitable habitat and spawning grounds. The stations also blocked the routes of migratory fish species between breeding grounds and non-breeding areas.

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[-] [email protected] 72 points 2 months ago

noooo stop, governments can't just do stuff that's beneficial to the environment porky-scared

[-] [email protected] 70 points 2 months ago

Super cool how China is actually following science in the tradeoffs between hydropower and natural environments while in America the discussion is whether or not hydro is communism and they sell off all the water so the Colorado dries up before it reaches the sea.

[-] [email protected] 57 points 2 months ago

Really cool that funding other energy initiatives allowed them to do this.

[-] [email protected] 53 points 2 months ago

This news has animorphed me 5% from yes-honey-left to bloomer

[-] [email protected] 44 points 2 months ago

But at what cost!?

[-] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago

China gov: Demolishing renewable energy infrastructure

USA gov: investing in public transport for fish

[-] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago

Not anymore, this kind of woke fish-tube science is getting cut.

[-] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago

How is the USA going to manage a conflict with China when they are cutting critical next gen weapons development

[-] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

We cannot allow a fish cannon gap

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

[-] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago

would be cool if this somehow helped bring the secret last baiji out of hiding and help pull them from extinction, but sadly its most likely too late for them. at least the others have a chance

[-] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

Same. And more habitat for giant salamanders would be dope quagsire-pog

[-] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

That seems like the sort of thing that cloning could fix

[-] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago

Wonder if this will effect energy generation in a significant way

[-] [email protected] 32 points 2 months ago

Probably not! They've been shutting down small dams where I live too (salmon country). Big dams are one of the most effective ways to generate power, but small ones just kind of suck.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago
[-] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

un-damed in this case

[-] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

Probably not as much after they installed all that solar power

[-] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

China also has tons of nuclear plants that will come online soon

[-] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Isn’t China going to build the world’s largest hydroelectric dam in Tibet that will displace hundreds of millions of South Asians who depend on the river for clean water?

[-] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

I'm clueless, tell me more?

[-] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

They're probably referring to the Medog Hydropower Station, which has attracted a lot of attention because the river flows into India, which means that there are international consequences for the development. The Chinese gov has done their usual above-market compensation of people affected by plans, but it has nevertheless attracted protests from the affected population. There are also environmental concerns, prompted by the massive potential impact of the build, which will have three times the generative capacity of the Three Gorges Dam.

Personally I'm inclined to think that the international outrage is overblown as usual with China, and that the dam will bring far more good than bad.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I hope that it’s just the usual China scare I hear from people but

that the dam will bring far more good than bad.

ie far more good for people I care about than those I kind of don’t

Edit:

The Chinese gov has done their usual above-market compensation of people affected by plans

This is what I’m interested in. Do you have any sources on this?

which has attracted a lot of attention because the river flows into India

This river flows through Bhutan, Northeastern India, and Bangladesh, and merges with the Ganges.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)
The Chinese gov has done their usual above-market compensation of people affected by plans

This is what I’m interested in. Do you have any sources on this?

Looking closer into this, I found some they said/but THEY said discourse going on in the UN. The UN claims that locals were not adequately warned or given democratic say in the dam's construction, but the Chinese UN office responded by saying that they did. Neither letter cites a source for their claims.

Here's an interesting paper on how China handles dam resettlement, especially since 2006 when it seems the government decided that their historical policies had been inadequate and changed how they did it. In specific they created a fund - established by an about 1% tax on electricity from hydroelectric dams - which was then used to make improvements for resettled rural communities (urban resettlers were left to the already-established urban welfare policies).

The PRS Plans involved both direct support and social investment. Cash payments of 600 Yuan per year (about 90 USD) were made to each resettled person for 20 years. The ICEDP was intended to focus on the long-term development of resettled and host communities. It aimed at: (1) improving irrigation for farmland production; (2) constructing infrastructure including communications, electricity, transport, and social welfare; (3) improving the ecological environment and increasing environment protection; (4) providing skills and career training; and (5) undertaking projects to enhance the profitable productive activities of all people in the resettled and host communities.

It sounds to me like other Chinese poverty-alleviation programs - a little cash (I don't know how far 90 USD goes in rural China but it doesn't seem like much) but mostly being focused on infrastructure improvements and connection to the national economy.

(I also saw a story in a state paper where a Tibetan talked about how great his two story government-issued house is, but it seems this story is talking about a different anti poverty program and the propaganda is a little heavy-handed.)

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Thanks for the reply, I’m going to check out your links in a bit

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Thank u I just learned I don't know shit about water lmao

[-] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

Archive link

Full textChina has demolished 300 dams and shut down most of the small hydropower stations on a major tributary of the upper Yangtze River to safeguard fish populations as part of an effort to restore the ecology of Asia’s longest waterway.

According to a report by the state news agency Xinhua on Monday, 300 of the 357 dams on Chishui He – also known as the Red River – had been dismantled by the end of December 2024.

In addition, 342 out of 373 small hydropower stations have been decommissioned, enabling many rare fish species to resume their natural reproductive cycles, the Xinhua report said.

The Red River flows for more than 400km (249 miles) through the southwestern provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan. It is regarded by ecologists as the last refuge for rare and endemic fish species in the Yangtze’s upper reaches. z Over the decades, water flows have been increasingly blocked by the dense network of hydropower stations and dams, restricting water volumes downstream and occasionally even causing some sections to dry up entirely.

This has drastically reduced the amount of suitable habitat and spawning grounds. The stations also blocked the routes of migratory fish species between breeding grounds and non-breeding areas.

Zhou Jianjun, a professor of hydraulic engineering at Tsinghua University, said that the decommissioning of hydropower stations usually referred to the cessation of electricity generation.

“The key is not whether the facilities still exist, but that, after power generation stops, the method of water control can be changed to meet ecological needs,” he said.

According to the Xinhua report, the large-scale rectification work that began in 2020 has meant that aquatic wildlife species, including the Yangtze sturgeon, have regained their habitat and vitality.

Along with the Chinese paddlefish, the freshwater sturgeon species – known as the last giant of the Yangtze – was declared extinct in the wild by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2022.

[Embedded YouTube video: 'About 50,000 Chinese sturgeon fry, known as ‘aquatic panda’, released into Yangtze River ']

The natural population of the sturgeon has declined sharply since the 1970s, largely as a result of dam construction and the development of a shipping industry in the Yangtze River.

No naturally bred young sturgeon had been found in the entire Yangtze River since 2000, but a team of scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Hydrobiology has reported promising signs of recovery, according to Xinhua.

The team, led by Liu Fei, a researcher at the institute in Wuhan, released two batches of Yangtze sturgeon into the Red River in 2023 and 2024, which have successfully adapted to the wild environment and are thriving.

This year, the researchers decided to take it a step further and examine whether the fish could migrate naturally for reproduction. In April, they released 20 adult Yangtze sturgeon into a section of the river in Guizhou.

By mid-April, they observed the fish displaying natural spawning behaviour and successfully hatching fry, the researchers said.

“This achievement indicates that the current ecological environment of the Red River can now meet the habitat and reproductive needs of Yangtze sturgeon,” Liu told the news agency.

According to the institute’s latest monitoring results, the Red River’s aquatic biodiversity is steadily improving, with a significant increase in the number of fish species collected in various sections of the river.

China has launched a series of policy measures to protect the Yangtze’s critical role as an aquatic habitat, all centred on a 10-year fishing ban imposed in 2020 and the regulation of the small hydropower stations that have affected its biodiversity.

For example, by the end of 2021, Sichuan had essentially finished rectifying its 5,131 small hydropower stations, which included shutting down 1,223 of them, according to a local official report the following year.

The local government has also strictly prohibited sand mining in the rivers in a bid to create a more favourable environment for aquatic animals to breed and reproduce.

In a communique released in August last year, Beijing announced that aquatic biodiversity had steadily improved since the fishing ban and other measures were introduced.

Fish, invertebrates and amphibians continued to recover, while the overall water quality of the Yangtze and its tributaries was rated as “excellent”, it said. The intensity of sand mining and other projects affecting fisheries had also decreased.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

[-] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

China will be anprim in 2050

this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
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