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In a remote corner of the Tibetan Plateau, surrounded by some of the world's tallest mountains and deepest gorges,
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China is planning the world's most complicated super dam.
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And it's the biggest hydroelectric project we've ever seen on megabuilds.
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The dam could give
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China enough clean electricity to power the UK for an entire year.
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But the ideal location is one of the most inaccessible gorges in Tibet.
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A project this size could change the geopolitical power balance across
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South Asia, if the earthquakes don't get in the way, that is.
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Hey, I'm Regis, and for this special episode, we dive really, really deep into China's insane plan to build the world's most powerful dam.
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China loves engineering.
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For the past 70 years, they've broken records in almost every industry, building more and bigger than most of the competition.
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And hydropower is no exception.
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China currently has about 87 ,000 dams, according to some reports.
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That's because with a population of 1 .4 billion people, water management is crucial.
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Not only that, but they've redirected many of their major rivers in an attempt to supercharge development.
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We've actually got a whole other video on that insane project, so we won't get into it here.
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But suffice it to say that
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China is no stranger to hydro mega projects.
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But compared to what they're working on now, everything else pales in comparison.
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Even the Three Gorges Dam.
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And there have been some crazy plans to realize this project.
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And one of the original ways they said
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they were going to do it was to use a nuclear weapon to blow up that dam.
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Someone suggested it.
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Thank goodness the Chinese government were like, nah, we're not doing that.
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So it's kind of like this thing where it's the most amazing potential for hydropower on the planet, but it's really tricky to extract that power.
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This is Dr. Ruth Gamble, an expert on the environmental, cultural, and climate history of Tibet, the Himalayas, and Asia as a whole.
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She helped us a lot in our research to uncover more details about China's mega dam.
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Hi, my name's Ruth Gamble.
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I'm a senior lecturer at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia.
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And I've been writing an environmental history of the Yalong Tsangpo River, which is the upper reaches of the Brahmapurcha.
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Well, and this river is where
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China is planning to develop a 60 gigawatt super dam capable
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of producing three times as much electricity as the biggest dam in the world today.
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If completed, this project would harness the natural power of one of the biggest rivers in Asia
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and produce enough clean electricity for tens of millions of people.
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Pulling it off would be an engineering triumph, even for China, and not just because of its size.
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The dam's supposed to be built here, in a remote and wild part of China that few foreigners ever visit.
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The mountainous area is prone to natural disasters, and even getting the construction materials up there would be something worth celebrating.
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China's neighbors, India and Bangladesh, share the same river that
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China wants to build on, and they're worried that a project of this size might seriously affect their access to water,
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particularly in light of climate change and increasingly unpredictable water flow.
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With all this to think about, it's crazy that
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China's even considering this, to be honest.
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So before we look at how they might actually pull it off, let's try and understand why.
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Basically, China needs a lot of electricity, twice as much as the USA and eight times as much as Russia.
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At the moment, the majority of Chinese electricity is generated by burning coal, but that's pretty much the dirtiest way to do it possible.
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Coal produces way more emissions than the alternatives, especially hydropower.
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So as China moves towards net zero and their demand for electricity keeps rising,
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the idea is to use more renewable sources of energy to produce electricity.
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As a result, China is investing in everything from solar panels and wind turbines to tidal power and hydroelectric dams.
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In fact, since the 1950s, China has built tens of thousands of dams, including the biggest and most powerful hydroelectric facility in the world,
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the Three Gorges Dam.
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And now, after damming most of their internal rivers, China has turned their attention to their major international rivers, and there are a lot.
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That's because China basically controls most of the water in Asia, and all because of this, the Tibetan Plateau.
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With an average altitude of over 4 ,500 meters, it towers above Asia and covers an area five times larger than France.
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This insane altitude means that it's filled with glaciers and ice, so much so that it's nicknamed the Earth's third pole.
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And as all that ice melts, it forms many of the biggest and most important rivers in the region.
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Rivers like the Indus, the Ganges, the Mekong, and the Yarlung Tsangpo.
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In fact, the plateau provides so much water for the region that it's also known as the Water Tower of Asia.
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So there was this idea that this one mountain in western
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Tibet was the center of the universe, and then the four rivers flowed out from it but
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so these rivers aren't just a place where people live
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they're also the sites of the largest agricultural regions in all the countries
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they go through whether it's pakistan india the southeast asia
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or china right so
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if you think about the food bowls of china india pakistan southeast asia are all along these rivers
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if you're going to be an alien
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that invaded earth you'd want to take over control of the tibetan plateau
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because you'd be in charge of all of the water of half the world's population really fast.
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Okay, so these rivers are definitely very important, and to China, they could provide not only an enormous source of renewable energy,
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but geopolitical power over their downstream neighbors.
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We'll come back to that later, but for now, let's take a look at the exact river that China's targeting.
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This is the Yarlong Changpo.
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Depending on which country it's flowing through, it's also known as the Sayang and the Brahmaputra,
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and thanks to the insane amount of white water and waterfalls it contains, many call it the Everest of Rivers.
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To keep things simple, though, we'll just stick with the Yarlung Tsangpo.
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It starts here at the Angsi Glacier and flows over a thousand kilometers east until it reaches Namcha Barwa Mountain.
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From there, it turns south and runs into Inglia and Bangladesh before finally emptying into the Indian Ocean.
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This river is incredible.
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It's the highest major river in the world, and at almost 3 ,000 kilometers long, it's also one of the longest.
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As far as we know, no one has ever traveled its entire length, and it's easy to see why.
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This area of Medo is where they're going to build the dam, is right next to the Indian border, and it's really isolated, right?
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It took ages even for the British to figure out where the river actually flowed through that region.
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It's one of the most isolated places.
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The exact location that
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China is targeting for the dam is here.
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It's called the Yarlung Tsangpo Gorge, a sacred place in Tibetan culture, which is even said to contain a hidden entrance to the spirit world.
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You have different ethnic groups living within the gorge.
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At the north, you have the Tibetans, and at the south, you have the Adi people,
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and then in between, you have the Pemokopa, is a different group.
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And the Tibetans have this idea that a goddess's head rests on the Tibetan plateau,
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and her body curves around the river's bends and her feet end up on the Assamese plains.
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So they consider that entire stretch of the river to be not just a sacred site, but an embodied goddess.
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However, China is not interested in this place because of its spiritual significance, but rather because of its unique geography,
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which makes it the perfect location for a massive hydropower megaproject.
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That's because the river descends rapidly as it passes through the gorge.
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Here, as it curves around the 7 .7 kilometer tall Nanchabarwa Mountain in a huge arc known as the Great Bend,
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it drops more than 2 ,000 meters in altitude.
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For comparison, the Grand Canyon is only 1 ,857 meters at its deepest point,
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making the Yarlung -Cangpo Gorge three times deeper from riverbed to mountain peak.
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So this is one of the steepest descents of a river on the planet, probably the steepest descent.
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The river begins at over 3 ,000 meters, and within 100 kilometers, it has descended to 600 meters.
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So that's one of the steepest descents on the planet.
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It's a giant natural wonder, buried deep in one of the most remote and inaccessible parts of the world.
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And since it's so hard to get there, scientists are still discovering new species in this region every year.
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They're still finding new mammals that no one's ever seen before through camera traps in this region.
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I mean, that's extraordinary in 2024 to find new mammals, right?
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So it's an amazing place biologically as well.
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So they have to figure out a way to extract the hydropower without trashing the biodiversity.
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And this is where
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China is planning to build their super dam.
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Sound crazy?
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Well, it really is.
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Before we take an exact look at the crazy dam that
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China's planning on building, we quickly want to thank this video's partner, CyberGhost VPN.
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And now, back to the dam.
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The area of China's Superdam is so remote that there wasn't even a major road here all year round until 2013.
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But the potential hydropower resources are just too huge for the Chinese government to pass up.
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Despite its mountainous surroundings, China's been developing hydropower on the Yarlung -Cangpo for a while.
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As things stand, there are several other hydropower facilities further upstream at Dagu, Jieshu, and Jia Chaom.
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But they're nothing compared to the 60 gigawatt super dam.
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Details about the actual plans are very vague.
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Either the government doesn't know exactly how they're going to pull it off yet, or they don't want anyone else to know.
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So there's basically two ways they could do it and both of them have problems.
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One of them is to build another cascade of dams down through the Great Gorge.
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And that's really problematic because this is a biodiverse region and that would really trash the place.
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And then the second way is to dig a tunnel from
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the highest reach of the river to the bottom reach of the river and release the water through the tunnel.
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And then you create a lot of power coming out right.
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But that would mean the water comes out right near the Indian border.
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So either way, it's tricky.
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And this second option seems to be the most likely one so far.
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In some cases like this one, it just makes more sense to build a hydropower station that uses the natural flow of the water,
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rather than backing it all up.
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It's called a run -of -the -river system, and it's actually pretty common, with major examples everywhere from Brazil to the United States,
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and China, of course.
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Instead of creating a reservoir, the water is simply redirected from a high point on the river to a lower point.
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Along the way, it's forced through a power station, spinning turbines as it passes through and creating electricity.
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Now, the principle is nothing new, but putting it all into practice at the Yarlung Tsangpo Gorge is a completely different story.
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The idea would be to bore a tunnel all the way through the Namcha Barwa Mountain, cutting the Great Bend straight across.
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Water would pour down through the tunnel, emerging downstream after dropping thousands of meters in altitude and passing through a power station.
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Well, not just a power station.
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Some reports say that there would actually be a series of nine separate hydroelectric facilities at the bottom of the tunnel.
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Water would pass from one to the other as it moves downstream, generating electricity at each one separately.
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We took a look at the maps, and as far as we can tell, even if the tunnel cut through the bend at its shortest point,
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it would still be 40 kilometers long.
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Another potential route may be one that appears on the ABC website.
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They show a tunnel running between the towns of Pei and Mødøg, which we calculate to be about 50 kilometers long.
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That's the same length as the channeled tunnel connecting the UK to mainland Europe.
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Something like that might make more sense than the shortest possible route
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if it meant better access to goods and services at each end.
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Either way, experts say a tunnel like this could carry 2 ,000 cubic meters of water every second,
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meaning the project could produce up to 300 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year.
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To put that in perspective, the Three Gorges Dam only generates a hundred billion.
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But in terms of visible construction, this mega dam would actually look much smaller than the Three Gorges Dam.
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So this is the thing with this project.
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The mega in the mega project is hopefully more about the
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power of the water coming down the mountains than the size of the project they're going to build.
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Yeah, the point of the Three Gorges Dam is its sheer size creates the kinetic energy
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or the gravitational potential energy for the water falling off the side of it to turn turbines.
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In this space, you have nature's created a mega project.
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The gorge itself is like nothing else on the planet.
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So it's not so much having to build something massive as to exploit the power that's already there.
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So you wouldn't need as much of a bigger dam to create the power, to extract the power from that space.
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But this definitely doesn't diminish the insane challenges of this megaproject.
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Some experts say that this would be the riskiest, most complicated, and most expensive project undertaken on any river, anywhere, ever.
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And they're not just talking about how remote the region is.
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It's also prone to massive earthquakes.
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The Yarlung Tsangpo Gorge sits on something called the Indo -Tsangpo Suture Zone,
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which is basically the result of India colliding with Asia over 50 million years ago.
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The two tectonic plates that smash together when the landmasses met are still rubbing up against each other, and this causes a lot of seismic activity.
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In 1950, the region experienced one of the most severe earthquakes ever recorded.
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Measuring 8 .6 on the Richter scale, the tremors were felt as far away as Calcutta, and water disturbances were registered in England and Norway.
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The earthquake killed over 700 people in the sparsely populated region and caused landslides which blocked the Arlun Tsangpo for eight days.
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When the natural dam finally broke, it created a seven -meter -high wave that killed over 500 people.
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And the crazy thing is that similar earthquakes have been registered multiple times throughout the 20th century.
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If that happens after the dam has been built, the downstream consequences could genuinely be catastrophic.
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So it's not if but when there's going to be another major earthquake in that region.
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And it's not just the earthquakes either.
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Landslides are also very common.
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In the last 20 years, the Yarlun Tsengpo has been blocked several times by natural debris,
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including in March 21, when a melting glacier fell four kilometers into the river, just upstream from the Great Bend.
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The resulting backlog could be seen by satellites.
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And that was nowhere close to the only incident
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and the example i would use again is this glacier lake outburst flood leading to a dam collapsing
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and killing at least 100 people in sikkim last november and
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that was a tiny dam yeah it was a tiny dam
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and it did that much damage so
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if you've got one that's a bigger dam on that bigger scale
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and something goes wrong with it it's mega it's like a really bad outcome
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and the other thing is too that it's right next to the border
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so it wouldn't just be a devastating event for the people who live downstream,
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but it'd also be an international geopolitical incident bringing in two countries that don't have a resolved border.
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Seeing these images really brings home how powerful nature can be, and just how crazy this project really is.
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The scale of it all is honestly mind -blowing.
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And while there's no official confirmation on exactly what's going to happen, there are several signs that the government is serious about this project.
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This map of hydrodevelopment sites produced by a Chinese company 20 years ago identifies the enormous potential at the Great Bend.
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And more recently, government planning documents announced development on the lower reaches of the river.
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The fact that this was put into the Chinese national plan, right, the five -year plan, suggests that they're trying to, it's a big deal.
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It's not just another dam that you're going to build, right?
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It's a big deal to try and extract this energy from the lower Yalongfangpo.
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So it suggest they're trying to do something super techy.
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Like the next thing
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that they had after saying they were going to exploit the power of the law Yalong Sangpo was go to the moon.
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Apart from the five -year plan, the project was also publicly discussed by Yan Jihong, chairman of PowerChina, the company reportedly in charge of construction.
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According to the Global Times, he confirmed that the project would produce 300 billion kilowatts per hour of electricity per year
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and play a significant role in China's net zero goals.
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As far as we can tell, work seems pretty sure to go ahead, which is why
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China's downstream neighbors are preparing themselves.
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If the flow of the Yarlun Tsangpo is disrupted, it could have serious effects on the lives of millions of people in India and Bangladesh.
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People keep thinking about dams as being things that hold back water, but it's not just water that they hold back, they also hold back sediment
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and most of bangladesh well all of bangladesh pretty much is formed by sediment
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that has descended down from the himalaya right so it's
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if you're holding back sediment it means
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that you the the people who are farming in assam
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and bangladesh don't get the same fertilizer fertilizing soil
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and descending on their fields every monsoonal season as they have for like millennia right so
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So all of that, those places are incredibly fertile
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because of the mudslide that comes down the hill every year during the monsoon.
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So that's one thing.
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It decreases fertility in the soil because there's no sediment getting down the hill or less sediment.
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So this is why I'm saying if the Chinese government has figured out
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or the Chinese scientists have figured out a way to let sediment through more, that this would have less of an effect.
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So this hydropower station could seriously alter day -to -day water flow downstream.
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Indian and Bangladeshi farmers who depend on the river could experience water shortages and flooding as a result of the dam.
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For them, climate change is already making water management increasingly difficult, and the added complications of China's super dam might cause huge problems for food production.
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In an attempt to mitigate the effects of the super dam, India has announced their own project.
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They plan to build a 10 gigawatt dam that would help them store and control their own water resources.
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This could be good for India, but might make the situation even more complicated for Bangladesh at the bottom of the river.
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And this all speaks to the bigger problem underlying everything, geopolitics.
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If one country controls the flow of water to another, they hold a huge amount of power.
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Water could potentially be used as a strategic weapon by upstream neighbors to exert influence over those downstream.
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For China and India, that's a major cause for concern.
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The two countries already have a difficult relationship, thanks to border disputes and competition for resources and political influence.
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In 2020, tensions got so high on the border that the two armies clashed, resulting in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers.
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We're not saying that
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China's superdam is going to lead to war, but it's likely to strain an already delicate relationship.
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And as the climate heats up, water is sure to be a new focal point for strategic competition.
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So I think that might be part of what they're trying to do, is find a way to extract water without annoying India,
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without destroying the environment.
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And then that really would be a technological feat equal to getting to the moon and Mars.
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The future of the relationship between India and China is just one of the many questions surrounding this megaproject.
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As the biggest electricity consumer in the world, China has an obligation to focus on renewable sources of power,
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but their neighbors also have a right to use the river that's fed them for centuries.
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We don't know when exactly construction might start or even how much it'll all cost, but the fact that
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China's even considering this is kind of crazy.
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But that being said, China's kind of known for building what other countries can't, and if anyone can pull this off, it's probably them.
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So the only question left is what do you think?
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Will they actually manage it?
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And what will the consequences be for India and Bangladesh?
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This is one that we're going to keep a close eye on, so make sure to subscribe to stay updated.
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We'll let you know if anything gets moving on this.
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And if you want to try CyberGhost VPN, make sure to use our link in the description.
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It's a great VPN and their current deal for $2 .03 a month
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and 45 days money back guarantee is a great deal, so it's totally risk -free.
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Thank you for watching this special episode, and as always, we'll see you in the next video.
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Vocabolario e note di pronuncia per questa lezione
Questa lezione di conversazione si basa sul video “China's $100BN Himalayan Mega Dam”. Le parole che ritornano più spesso: dam, river, china, project. Questo video contiene 278 frasi e 3972 parole da ripetere con lo shadowing. Il parlato dura 22:46. Chi parla ha un ritmo naturale di circa 174 parole al minuto, vicino a una conversazione quotidiana. Il 82% delle parole rientra nelle 3.000 più comuni dell’inglese; conviene studiare le altre prima di iniziare.
Vocaboli chiave di questo video
15 parole del video che vale la pena imparare, con pronuncia e significato:
| Parola | Pronuncia | Significato |
|---|---|---|
| tunnel sostantivo | /ˈtʌn(ə)l/ | tunnel, galleria |
| downstream aggettivo | /ˌdaʊnˈstɹiːm/ | a valle |
| earthquake sostantivo | /ˈɝθkweɪk/ | terremoto, sisma |
| meter sostantivo | /ˈmitəɹ/ | metro, contatore |
| remote aggettivo | /ɹəˈməʊt̞/ | remoto |
| insane aggettivo | /ɪnˈseɪn/ | insano, pazzo |
| dam sostantivo | /ˈdæm/ | argine, diga |
| bend verbo | /bɛnd/ | curvare, piegare |
| extract sostantivo | /ˈɛkstɹækt/ | estratto |
| plateau sostantivo | /plæˈtoʊ/ | altopiano |
| complicated aggettivo | /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/ | complicato, intricato |
| steep aggettivo | /stiːp/ | scosceso, ripido |
| descent sostantivo | /dəˈsɛnt/ | discesa |
| renewable aggettivo | /ɹɪˈnu.ə.bl̩/ | rinnovabile |
| turbine sostantivo | /ˈtɜː.baɪn/ | turbina, rotore |
I phrasal verb che sentirai
| Parola | Pronuncia | Significato |
|---|---|---|
| figure out verbo | scoprire, rendersi conto | |
| hold back verbo | fare complimenti | |
| pass through verbo | trapassare | |
| go through verbo | attraversare | |
| blow up verbo | saltare in aria, esplodere | |
| go ahead verbo | /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ | procedere, andare avanti |
| heat up verbo | scaldare | |
| take over verbo | usurpare |
La grammatica di questo video
Le strutture che chi parla usa di più, con le parole esatte del video:
| Struttura | Nel video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — un’azione iniziata prima e ancora in corso | I've been writing · China's been developing |
| Present perfect have/has + participio passato — un’azione passata che conta ancora adesso | we've ever seen · they've broken · they've redirected |
| Forma passiva be + participio passato — conta ciò che accade, non chi lo fa | be built · is generated · is even said |
| Frasi relative who / which + frase — un’informazione in più su una persona o una cosa | River, which is · culture, which is · free, which is |
Pronuncia a cui fare attenzione
Chi parla usa 49 contrazioni e forme ridotte, come they're, don't, we'll. Pronunciale nella forma breve, così come le senti.
- I suoni “th”: earthquake /ˈɝθkweɪk/, southeast /sawˈθɪjst/, ethnic /ˈɛθ.nɪk/
- I suoni “sh” e “zh”: glacier /ˈɡleɪ.ʃɚ/, trash /tɹæʃ/, potentially /pəˈtɛnʃ(ə)li/, exception /əkˈsɛpʃən/, crucial /ˈkɹuː.ʃəl/
- Parole lunghe — attenzione all’accento: electricity /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɪsɪti/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, potentially /pəˈtɛnʃ(ə)li/, incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, extraordinary /ɪksˈtɹɔːrdɪn(ə)ɹi/
I suoni difficili per chi parla italiano:
- /h/ — va soffiata, non è muta: nowhere /ˈnoʊ.(h)wɛɹ/, hacker /hækəɹ/, hydroelectric /ˌhʌɪdrəʊɪˈlɛktrɪk/
- Consonante finale — senza aggiungere una vocale dopo: earthquake /ˈɝθkweɪk/, bend /bɛnd/, extract /ˈɛkstɹækt/, altitude /ˈælt.ɪˌtjuːd/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/
- /æ/ — più aperta della “e”: dam /ˈdæm/, extract /ˈɛkstɹækt/, plateau /plæˈtoʊ/, altitude /ˈælt.ɪˌtjuːd/, guarantee /ˌɡæɹ.ənˈtiː/
Come esercitarsi con questo video
- Ascolta tutto il video una volta senza parlare e annota le parole che non conosci.
- Inizia a velocità 0,75×, fai shadowing frase per frase e torna alla velocità normale quando diventa facile.
- Registrati e confronta con l’originale, facendo attenzione a parole come tunnel, downstream, earthquake.
Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?
Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.