Hundreds of acres of virgin rainforest gets flooded and 20, 000 people will have to move (compared with 1.3 million during the building of Three Gorges Dam in China).

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The company is involved in two more dams, in Uganda and Laos, which are expected to receive World Bank funding, and it has helped build enormous reservoirs such as the Three Gorges Dam in China.

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The two countries share the Itaipu hydroelectric dam (still the world's largest until China's Three Gorges is completed).

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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.

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