Waters rise behind huge Chinese dam

China began filling the reservoir of the Three Gorges dam yesterday in the next stage of a project affecting the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

The Xinhua news agency reported the closure of 19 of the 22 gates at the dam in Yichang, in the central province of Hubei, blocking the Yangtze to form what will become a 365-mile reservoir.

As symbolic as the Hoover dam was to the US in the 1930s, the Three Gorges is intended to be a signal to the world that China has become an economic powerhouse beginning to come into its own.

With the three gates left open to allow the flow of the Yangtze downriver, the water level of the dam is expected to reach 135 metres (440ft) by June 15, and it will start generating power in the autumn.

Limited river navigation will begin within a few weeks after a two-month stoppage.

Officials say 700,000 people have been relocated to make way for the dam, which will submerge historic towns and relics of Chinese civilisation dating back thousands of years. Critics claim it will bring ecological disaster.

But the state media have broadcast none of the doubts about the dam widely reported abroad. In contrast, the Beijing Daily called the Three Gorges "a sign of the rejuvenation of the Chinese people, and the culmination of the work of several generations".

China's TV stations broadcast pictures of the Yangtze's waters being blocked behind huge concrete walls. Almost every year the middle and lower reaches of the river suffer from great floods which can sweep whole towns off the map.

Originally the brainchild of Chairman Mao, the main backer of the scheme at its inception was Li Peng, infamous in the west for his role in the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The national people's congress first announced the project in 1992. Yesterday - celebrated in China as International Children's Day - was chosen as an auspicious date for the sluice gates to close.

Still covered in scaffolding, the dam will not be completed until 2009 - a year after Beijing hosts the Olympics - and will cost an estimated 180bn yuan (£13bn).

By 2009 the water level is expected to reach 175 metres, holding 39,300m cubic metres of water, and the electricity generated will reportedly illuminate half of China.