CHENGDU, China- Even in China, where power plants, coal mines,
water-transport networks, and other big tools of
industrialization are built at astonishing scale and with
surprising speed, the hydropower dam construction program in
Sichuan, Yunnan, Tibet, and other southwest provinces has no
equal in China, or anywhere else for that matter. Israeli
journalist Rachel Beitarie reports on China’s mammoth dam-
building program for Circle of Blue, the sixth chapter in the
Choke Point: China series that I’m editing and helping to report
and write. Next week, we leave for China to publicly disclose
the findings in the series in a series of events that start on
April 1 with a conference appearance at the U.S. Embassy in
Beijing. Big takeaway for me is that while the United States is
pursuing an energy policy designed to perpetuate the fossil fuel
era, China is aggressively mastering every form of energy
available. Not veto in the system is why. Here in Suijiang
County-a remote and mountainous region on the border betwe