Shadowing Practice: China's $100BN Himalayan Mega Dam - Learn English Speaking with Video
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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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Thank you again to CyberGhost VPN for sponsoring this video.
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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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CyberGhost VPN will protect your data while you browse and give you full access to blocked content on the internet.
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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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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “China's $100BN Himalayan Mega Dam”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: dam, river, china, project. This video has 278 sentences and 3972 words to shadow. The speech runs for 22:46. The speaker talks at a natural 174 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| electricity noun | /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɪsɪti/ | Originally, a property of amber and certain other nonconducting substances to attract lightweight material when rubbed, or the cause of this property; now… |
| tunnel noun | /ˈtʌn(ə)l/ | An underground or underwater passage. |
| downstream adjective | /ˌdaʊnˈstɹiːm/ | Toward the lower part of a stream; with the current (of a river, brook, or other flow of fluid). |
| earthquake noun | /ˈɝθkweɪk/ | A shaking of the ground, caused by volcanic activity or movement around geologic faults. |
| meter noun | /ˈmitəɹ/ | A device that measures things. |
| mega adjective | /ˈmɛɡə/ | Very large. |
| remote adjective | /ɹəˈməʊt̞/ | At a distance; disconnected. |
| insane adjective | /ɪnˈseɪn/ | Exhibiting unsoundness or disorder of mind; not sane; utterly mad. |
| dam noun | /ˈdæm/ | A structure placed across a flowing body of water to stop the flow or part of the flow, generally for purposes such as retaining or diverting some of the water… |
| bend verb | /bɛnd/ | To cause (something) to change its shape into a curve, by physical force, chemical action, or any other means. |
| extract noun | /ˈɛkstɹækt/ | Something that is extracted or drawn out. |
| plateau noun | /plæˈtoʊ/ | A largely level expanse of land at a high elevation; tableland. |
| altitude noun | /ˈælt.ɪˌtjuːd/ | The absolute height of a location, usually measured from sea level. |
| complicated adjective | /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/ | Difficult or convoluted. |
| steep adjective | /stiːp/ | Of a near-vertical gradient; of a slope, surface, curve, etc. that proceeds upward or downward at an angle approaching vertical. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. | |
| hold back verb | To act with reserve; to contain one's full measure or power. | |
| pass through verb | To go through, to travel through, to transit or lie across a place or from one place to another. | |
| come down verb | To descend, fall down, collapse. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| blow up verb | To explode or be destroyed by explosion. | |
| cut through verb | To take a shortcut through. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | I've been writing · China's been developing |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | we've ever seen · they've broken · they've redirected |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | be built · is generated · is even said |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | River, which is · culture, which is · free, which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 49 contractions and reduced forms, such as they're, don't, we'll. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: earthquake /ˈɝθkweɪk/, southeast /sawˈθɪjst/, ethnic /ˈɛθ.nɪk/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: glacier /ˈɡleɪ.ʃɚ/, trash /tɹæʃ/, potentially /pəˈtɛnʃ(ə)li/, exception /əkˈsɛpʃən/, crucial /ˈkɹuː.ʃəl/
- Long words — get the stress right: electricity /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɪsɪti/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, potentially /pəˈtɛnʃ(ə)li/, incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, extraordinary /ɪksˈtɹɔːrdɪn(ə)ɹi/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like electricity, tunnel, downstream.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.