The dissertation is a case study of the Three Gorges Project (TGP) in China, the largest hydroelectric dam and water management project in world history. It begins with a historical inquiry of the Nationalists' vision of the TGP, their planning of the water conservancy in general and of the Yangtze in particular, as well as their cooperation with the United States to develop the Yangtze valley by following the model of the Tennessee Valley Authority. It is then followed by an examination of the People's Republic's ambition in taming the Yangtze River and its leaders' enduring efforts to launch the TGP despite much domestic and international opposition.; The dissertation makes full use of the archival resources, including internal government documents, declassified collections from the Second National Archives in China, from the U.S. National Archives, from the Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman Presidential Libraries, from the Bureau of Reclamation files in the United States, and from the Academia Historica in Taiwan, as well as numerous publications in both Chinese and English. This study is also informed by discussions, correspondence, and interviews with officials and knowledgeable people who have been intimately involved with this unprecedented project.; Contrary to the assumption that the TGP is a creation of Communist rule, the study investigates the efforts of the Nationalist Government to promote the TGP particularly in cooperation with the United States in the 1940s. The history of the project from the 1920s to the present demonstrates that a shuiligongcheng of the magnitude of the TGP has been an important means for a series of Chinese governments in the twentieth century to pursue visions of national greatness, while enforcing social control over their nation. It is a strong example of the role and mythology of engineering in conceptions of the modern Chinese state.
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