Guardian story by way of WPR's Media Roundup.
Makes me think of TR's initial stuff and then the huge infrastructure push with FDR, this Hoover Dam-like monstrosity planned for Tibet--the biggest dam in human history (38 gigawatt). Will save tons of CO2, but will likewise change the environmental landscape big time.
But China feels compelled to network and integrate its western provinces--its great inland bridge to the larger energy and mineral resources in Central and Southwest Asia.
And frankly, tightening the grip makes sense politically, whereas landlocked states do not.
The key for China: making all this integration seem like a connectivity bonanza that allows economic development, networking toward the richer and better connected coasts, but also allows for increasing political self-rule--less unitary and more federal.
That's the only way you make economic development work over such a large terrain.
Almost 30 dams are currently planned or being built along this crucial Tibetan river (Bahmaputra).