First, China is not a monolith, and decision-making there can also be painfully slow (for example, the Three Gorges project was first mooted in the 1920s).

ECONOMIST: Democracy and growth are not in competition

Promoting the power-generation aspect of the Three Gorges project may have seemed a good way to counter the criticisms made by the dam's opponents, and the suspicions of potential investors.

ECONOMIST: China

However, some of those projects, such as the gigantic Three Gorges project on the Yangtze River, due to start generating power in 2009, have created a separate set of environmental problems.

FORBES: Pollution And Prosperity

Later this year the Yangzi will be blocked and diverted at the site of the Three Gorges dam, a giant project that will turn the 600 kilometres below Chongqing into a lake.

ECONOMIST: The benign ghost of Lu Zoufu

Like the Great Wall or, more recently, the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River it's a classic imperial project, still possible under China's one-party system.

NPR: River Has Long Reflected China's Glories, Sorrows

Perhaps no project better exemplifies this challenge than the Three Gorges Dam.

CNN: Economic miracle, environmental disaster