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SternSkipper -> RE: Oh nice! Now China is rebuilding our infra-structure? (2/9/2012 4:23:37 PM)
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On the Three Gorges Dam alone there's quite a few American firms involved:
Atkinson Construction won a contract in 1999 to provide consulting services for the installation, operation, maintenance, and management of imported large equipment used in the Three Gorges dam construction. When major problems occur, Atkinson inspectors are required to submit reports directly to the State Council's Three Gorges Project Committee, which is headed by Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji. The decision to hire international supervisors came after Premier Zhu raised concerns about corruption and shoddy construction practices, following his site inspection in December 1998. (HRW, November 1999; IWP&DC October 1999; BBC, August 31, 1999; GDN, May 25, 1999; IWP&DC, May 1999; AP, April 19, 1999.)
Bechtel Enterprises, the largest engineering company in the United States, provided consulting services to the Three Gorges project in the 1980s. In October 1994, Joe Ferrigno, Bechtel's managing director of Asian and Pacific operations, was quoted in Far Eastern Economic Review, saying that Bechtel Enterprises was "not at all likely" to pursue Three Gorges contracts because the dam "is extremely controversial from an environmental perspective."
Caterpillar, an Illinois-based construction equipment company, sold $15 million worth of equipment to the Yangtze Three Gorges Project Development Corporation in 1996.
Caterpillar, Rotec Industries, and U.S. Voith Hydro had applied for loans from the United States Export-Import Bank to support their bids for Three Gorges contracts, but they were turned down in 1996. Following an intensive campaign led by Probe International and U.S. environmental groups, the U.S. Export-Import bank announced in May 1996 that it could not support U.S. companies seeking contracts to build the dam because "the information received, though voluminous, fails to establish the project's consistency with the bank's environmental guidelines." The Three Gorges dam became the first serious test of the bank's new guidelines, introduced by Congress in 1992, which required the bank to conduct environmental reviews of foreign projects that sought its backing. Ex-Im asked the National Security Council to convene a panel to consider the merits of U.S. participation. In September 1995, the NSC delivered its recommendation that the U.S. government should not "align itself with a project that raises environmental and human rights concerns on the scale of the Three Gorges." Martin Kamarck, President and Chairman of the United States Export-Import Bank, toned its decision down, noting only that that there was not enough information and for the bank to reconsider its decision, it "would need further evidence that these issues will be adequately addressed, resolved and/or mitigated by the project's sponsors." Kamarck noted at the time that several U.S. companies had sold $60 to $100 million worth of equipment and services to the project without Ex-Im Bank support. (Fortune, October 11, 1997; IWP&DC, July 1999; Statement of the Board of Directors of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, Washington DC, May 30, 1996; CD, October 31, 1994.)
CS Johnson is supplying one of four major concrete batching plants to the Three Gorges project. (IWP&DC, July 1999; Reuter, November 1997.)
General Electric has received a contract valued at approximately
US$37 million to supply three turbines, additional equipment and
services for a major hydroelectric power project. The 3,300MW
Pubugou Hydropower Station on the Dadu River in Sichuan province is the fifth largest hydroelectric station in China and the biggest on-going
project in Sichuan, according to GE. (Power in Asia, Sep 30, 2004.)
Harza Engineering, a Chicago-based company, provided consulting services to the Three Gorges project in 1996. In 1999, Harza Engineering won a contract to supervise construction of the Three Gorges dam. The company is required to report any major problems arising at the construction site to the State Council's Three Gorges Project construction committee, headed by China's Premier Zhu Rongji. The hiring of international supervisors comes after Premier Zhu raised concerns about corruption and shoddy construction practices following his site inspection in December 1998. (IWP&DC, October 1999; IWP&DC, May 1999; AP, April 19, 1999; SNS, January 1996.)
ITT Industries, one of the world's largest pump manufacturing groups, announced on Nov. 8, 2000, that its Chinese subsidiary, Nanjing Goulds Pump Co., received a contract worth US$604,595 to provide 48 deep-well pumps for the five permanent ship locks to be built in the Yichang section of the Yangtze River in Hubei. (ChinaOnline, November 10, 2000.)
Management Resources International, a consulting company, participated in a World Bank-sponsored trip to the Three Gorges area in 1986. D. Graybill of Management Resources International went on the trip and was also a member of the World Bank panel of experts that reviewed the Canadian feasibility study in 1988. (See United States Bureau of Reclamation) Rotec Industries, an Illinois-based engineering company, has sold cranes and conveyer belts worth about $50 million and another $30 million worth of concrete equipment to the Three Gorges dam's developers. (Fortune, October 11, 1997; ENR, March 31, 1997.)
September 2000 - A conveyor belt from Rotec Industrial Inc.'s tower crane fell more than 60 feet onto a group of Chinese workers at the Three Gorges Dam project, killing three and injuring 30. The accident occurred on the night of Sunday September 3, 2000. Robert Oury, Rotec's chief executive officer, said the machine involved in the accident is one of four combination crane and conveyor belt towers working on the dam, purchased from Rotec for more than $8 million. It has been on the site for 14 months, conveying and pouring concrete almost around the clock, he said in a telephone interview. Oury said that after a serious problem with a bearing, Chinese technicians took part of the machine to the ground to repair it. As they sought to reassemble the conveyor belt that rises up the structure, parts of it fell to the ground, hitting the workers, he said.(Washington Post, September 6, 2000.)
October 2000 - Ke Changli is suing Rotec Corporation for US$420,000 for supplying the concrete conveyor Ke Changli claims was responsible for her husband's death late last year at the dam site. Ke Changli received US$7,250 in compensation after her husband, Ke Shanlin, a Three Gorges machine operator, died on Nov. 19, 1999, while using the Rotec conveyor's lift system. (Three Gorges Probe, October 24, 2000)
United States Army Corps of Engineers, a federal dam-building agency, was part of a
U.S. Three Gorges Working Group, a consortium of U.S. dam building companies and financiers, which was formed in the 1980s to participate in China's Three Gorges project. In 1985, the group reviewed technical aspects of the 180-metre and 150-metre schemes proposed by China's Ministry of Water Resources and Electric Power and recommended that: 1) social and environmental impact studies be conducted; 2) a cost-benefit analysis acceptable to potential financiers be conducted; and 3) the dam be built as a joint venture between the Chinese government and the U.S. Three Gorges Working Group, with possible funding from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, Sweden, Japan, and Canada. (Damming the Three Gorges: What Dam Builders Don't Want You To Know, 1993.) In 1986, the Army Corps participated in a World Bank-sponsored trip to the Three Gorges area along with other U.S. experts, and as a member of the World Bank's panel of experts that reviewed the Canadian Three Gorges feasibility study in 1988. (See United States Bureau of Reclamation) The U.S. Three Gorges Working Group included representatives from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the American Consulting Engineers Council, Guy F. Atkinson Company, Bechtel Civil and Mineral Inc.,
Coopers and Lybrand, Merrill Lynch Capital Markets, Morgan Bank, Morrison-Knudsen Inc., and Stone and
Webster Engineering Corporation. (See 14. FINANCIERS)
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