As usual for this type of gloom and doom articles, there is a lot of misleading and false information included for creating impressions and emotions. In this situation, we are not dealing with rivers in deserts but in net precipitation area of the globe. Adding a dam just add storage capacity and control over the flow rates but doesn't really use more water or change net water flows. China is not changing the long term average flow rate by adding dams and it can only be a "weapon" if there are no downstream dams with water storage. Of course, all that storage can be used to cover short term (annual up to decadal) droughts that nature will continue to create.



Adding the surface area of lakes created by dams will increase the "fishery" not decrease the fishery. It also opens the opportunity for net-pen aquaculture in the lakes where people can grow more desirable species of fish useful for more than fish sauce (probable use for the big tonnage of small fish being harvested). Every hectare of lake area will add another 1000 kg/ha of annual fish production and aquaculture will add about 10,000 kg/ha/yr.



All those thousands of megawatts of electrical energy are all dispatchable electrical energy which is worth a lot more than solar, which is only available during the day while using about 70,000 Ha of flat land area. China has already added the equivalent of 24 major nuclear power plants or a 100 coal-fired power plants (take you environmental risk and damage).



With increasing populations and human desires not to live in poverty with candlelight, dams are an excellent help. The anti-progress activists who are already up the ladder what to keep the rest of humanity in poverty by preventing progress.