By staff reporter Han Wei

From the Caijing Annual Conference

The rapid development of hydropower in China has been marked by poor planning and environmental damage that calls for more efficiency in government, said Shao Bingren, a senior official at the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.

Speaking at the Caijing annual conference in Beijing on December 12, Shao said a snapshot of China’s excessive and disorderly development of hydropower can be found along the upper Yangtze River, where the environment has been put at risk.

A study by a research team under CPPCC, China’s top political adviser, has found more than 3,000 hydropower plants operating or planned along the Yangtze’s upper reaches and its tributaries suffer from weak management or supervision.

Local governments in China’s river-rich southwest have been accelerating hydropower plant construction in recent years as part of a major effort to resolve local power shortages. But many projects have lacked a scientific approach to planning, Shao said.

According to the Ministry of Environmental Protection, 26 hydropower plants were built along the 503-kilometer Tuo River in Sichuan Province – nearly one every 20 kilometers. And eight hydropower plants have been built along the 120-kilometer upper Min River, said Shao.

These dense concentrations of hydropower plants are destroying local environments. And some plants were built in earthquake zones, posing huge risks.

Shao said the development strategy for the hydropower industry in the Yangtze region is now a decade old. But execution of the strategy has been irrational.

Now, Shao said, government administration over the industry should be strengthened by tightening supervision and providing more guidance.

In addition, Shao said, governments can use the current economic slowdown as an opportunity to improve government administration, reform pricing system and boost social services, which he thinks will help China emerge successfully from the global financial crisis.