China’s “1,000-Year Plan” Abandoned? $170 Billion Motuo Hydropower Project Really Left Unfinished?

Several vloggers on X say work has stopped on the lower Yarlung Tsangpo hydropower project in Tibet. Also known as the Yasha project and formerly called the Motou hydropower project, it carries a stated price tag of 1.2 trillion yuan. Its installed capacity and annual power output are said to be three times those of the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River. It was promoted as a project of the century personally directed by Xi Jinping. Yet just over a year after its official launch, work has stopped, according to those posts. Many people online wonder whether it'll end up unfinished, like Xiongan New Area. People familiar with the situation say the emergency halt followed widespread, systematic falsification of preliminary geological survey data that drew senior leaders' attention. The scandal came to light after the Hongqi Bridge collapsed in Maerkang in Sichuan's Aba Prefecture on November 11, 2025. The bridge had had been completed just 10 months earlier, a landslide triggered by reservoir filling caused it to snap and plunge into the river. And an official investigation report released in July 2026 delivered a harsh assessment. It traced the collapse directly to falsified preliminary surveys by Power China Chengdu Engineering Corporation, the company responsible for the geological work. The firm fabricated and inflated extensive data on soil and rock strength. As a result, the bridge was built on unstable deposits vulnerable to landslides. Seven people were placed under criminal investigation on suspicion of offenses involving a major safety accident. They included the former head of the company's transportation division. All were subjected to compulsory legal measures. 28 public officials were also held accountable. The resulting crackdown on geological survey practices also reached the Yasha Hydropower Project. Power China Chengdu had conducted its preliminary geological surveys and helped assess its feasibility and the safety of its water diversion tunnels. The sources say senior leaders were furious over the extensive falsification of geological data to prevent an even worse geological disaster. Decision makers halted all bidding plans for the Yasha project, bringing work to a stop. One person who posted the information said an engineering company owner told him about the stoppage. The owner had waited almost a year for bidding on the Yasha project. He also shared a late June response on an investor relations platform from Jindu Fans, a leading Chinese manufacturer of advanced industrial fans. On a stock exchange investor platform, an investor asked how much of the Yanshao preliminary ventilation project was complete. The investor also asked about the value of work expected to pass acceptance checks in 2026. In its official June 29 response, Jindun said, The lower Yanglun Changpo hydropower project had held a groundbreaking ceremony, but the bidding process had not yet begun. Earlier, investors had heavily promoted a story that Jindun won a 209 million yuan preliminary ventilation contract in April 2024. It was described as preparatory work to support construction before the main Yanshao project began. The latest disclosure, however, confirms that the contract rumor was false. In actuality, Jindun had never announced a winning contract for this project. There was no official announcement confirming that the Yanshao project had stopped. Still, digging tunnels 31 miles long and as deep as 9,800 feet in the fragile Himalayan tectonic zone carries extreme geological risks, debt crises, and public funds running dry. It's also unclear whether the CCP can still deliver such an expensive project. Many experts have long predicted the Yanshao would remain unfinished. A major groundbreaking ceremony took place in Nyingchi, Tibet, on July 29, 2025. At the same time, a new centrally controlled state enterprise, China Yangjiang Group, was established in Beijing. The announcement plan called for 1.2 trillion yuan to build five massive power stations in a cascade. Tunnels would divert water along a shorter route across the river's bend. The announcement sent excitement through China's capital markets. Related steel, cement, and commercial explosive stocks surged across the A-share market. Contractors, material suppliers, and investors flocked to the project's starting point in Pai Town in Tibet, hoping to profit. But just over a year later, videos online show the once-busy Pai Town looking deserted with buildings left empty. I haven't been here for two months. Look how quiet Pai Town is now. There used to be cars and people everywhere, and traffic backed up easily. Let me show you the streets around town. Here's one street. Here's another. This one was built later. All that's left now are empty shops and houses. Look how deserted it is. Maybe people are afraid to come back because of the demolition of unauthorized buildings. We'll head to the next street in a moment. Now, we're beside the bus station. You can see it over on the right. Look, no cars and no people. We're about to turn left onto what used to be the busiest road. Traffic used to back up here every day, every time, all the time. Look now, nobody's here, hardly any cars. It's really strange. Maybe it's because the project hasn't started. People couldn't hold out any longer, so those who needed to go home have left. A lot of people ask whether it's still worth doing business in Pai Town. Come see for yourself, and you'll have a better idea. The crackdown on unauthorized buildings keeps intensifying. More and more migrant workers are leaving. The whole street is deserted. The footage shows national highways and streets that were once packed with traffic now almost completely empty. Temporary shops and prefab buildings that once commanded sky-high rents are locked and abandoned. Contractors who arrived hoping for a share of the trillion yuan project are quietly packing up and heading home, disappointed, responding to news of the Yasha stoppage. Many commentators outside China say the country is fortunate. These problems emerged before construction began. Otherwise, the project could waste labor and public money before ending in a major disaster at a cost far greater than any benefit. Some industry professionals stress that geological surveys are essential for a hydropower project in such a complex terrain with so little existing data. But surveys are expensive, creating a strong financial incentive to falsify results. They say a halt at this stage signals serious problems. Even the earlier feasibility study may need major revisions or a fresh review. falsified geological surveys have long been an open secret in the engineering industry. Budgets shrink as money is skimmed off at each level. Survey firms that carry out closely spaced drilling strictly under the rules in their contracts often face heavy losses. As a result, most cut the number and depth of boreholes. They then rely on experienced geotechnical engineers to infer underground conditions from limited samples. In many major infrastructure projects in China, power and money effectively determine whether surveys are approved. Once leaders order a project to proceed, the geological data must support approval. A key conclusion must say that the site is suitable for construction under specified conditions. Within the industry, this has become routine. But the Yasha project is in Medog County, at the Great Bend of the lower Yarlung-Zangbo River. It sits at the heart of the Eastern Himalayan Syntaxis, where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates collide under immense pressure. The intensity of crustal movement, the steepness of the deeply cut terrain, and the stress within the rock are unparalleled worldwide. A study published in the respected journal Sedimentary Geology and Tectonic Geology identifies an active fault called the Pai Zun Fault. It runs north to south through the project's main reservoir area and the entrances to its water diversion tunnels. Along the main fault, The core zone of fractured and sheared rock ranges from roughly 100 feet to well over 1,000 feet wide. Including associated cracks, secondary faults, and heavily disturbed rock, the affected zone spans about 0.6 to 1.2 miles. Vertical displacement between the rock masses on either side reaches many thousands of feet. Movement along the Paizhen Fault has shattered the surrounding rock and severely weakened its physical and mechanical properties. that greatly reduces the foundation's ability to support structures and the stability of nearby slopes. The fault also remains highly active. Seismic monitoring networks record tiny or small earthquakes in and around Pai Town almost every month. This frequent activity shows that the rock along the fault is continually fracturing and releasing energy. A magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck Mainling County, Ningchi, on November 18, 2017. Its epicenter was near the fault's northern end, the quake triggered major landslides and cut off roads. At the heart of the Yasha project is a network of water diversion tunnels extending 31 miles. They would have to cross as many as 17 active fault zones like the Paizen Fault. At their deepest, they would lie 9,800 feet underground. That means tunneling through rock under extreme pressure at a depth equivalent to 400 stories. Engineers would face intense heat and violent rock bursts caused by enormous stress. Sudden surges of high-pressure groundwater could flood an entire tunnel. Commentators say shelving this project could actually be a major benefit to ordinary people. Beyond the dangerous geology, delivering its electricity to the eastern coast would require ultra-high voltage lines stretching thousands of miles across a high-altitude Qinghai-Tibet plateau. Overall maintenance costs would be extremely high. They describe it as a prestige project designed to showcase political achievements. achievements. Adding to the danger, a warming climate has sharply increased the risk of high altitude rock and ice collapses in the Himalayas in recent years. On August 26, a massive rock and glacier collapse struck a high altitude area of the Himalayas. The material broke apart as it plunged downhill, turning into a destructive debris flow and flash floods. They surged down river valleys into the area around the Gyirong border crossing between China and Nepal, leaving many people dead, injured, or missing. More large dry landslides and avalanches followed in late September on October 11. They struck Nepal's Mustang region and the Budhi Gandaki River basin in the central district of Gorkha. Huge masses of debris blocked rivers and formed temporary lakes. When those natural dams burst, devastating floods swept away bridges, homes, and camps for hydropower projects under construction. These cascading mountain disasters showed the destructive power of geological activity in the Himalayas. If the main Yasha project goes ahead, a similar ice or rock collapse in the Great Canyon could unleash a wall of ice and water. Reaching roughly 100 feet or more high, it could slam into the dams and underground diversion tunnels. It could cause heavy casualties among construction workers, destroy the project, and wipe out the enormous investment. It could also bring a devastating humanitarian disaster to downstream India and Bangladesh that could trigger unpredictable geopolitical conflict and even war between the two countries. Many people question how leaders in Zona and Hai could have been unaware of such dangerous geological conditions. Behind this are the drive for prestige projects under a totalitarian system, powerful state-owned corporate interests seeking public funds, and nationalist self-congratulation in geopolitical competition. Over the past 20 years, China's hydropower industry has built towering dams and vast reservoirs on major rivers, driven by a political mandate to be the world's largest. The Chinese Communist Party treated the Three Gorges Project's installed capacity and annual output as a supreme symbol of national strength in its rivalry with the West. But plans for international megaprojects, such as Grand Inga on the Congo River, threatened to overtake its top ranking. The Yasha Project was pushed into the 14th Five-Year Plan to preserve the ranking and satisfy Xi Jinping's ambitions for grand achievements. It went forward without detailed geological surveys or scientific environmental assessments. In July 2025, Premier Li Qiang hastily announced its official launch at the Mainling hydropower construction site in Tibet. Presented as a national strategy, the launch served to give the closing of the 14th Five-Year Plan a political boost. But in the 15th Five-Year Plan, which began in 2026, officials quietly changed the wording to, advance safely and in an orderly manner. That phrase ruled out a rapid, large-scale construction push on the lower Yarlung Tsangpo in the near term. Giant state-owned companies such as Power China, China Energy Engineering Corporation, and the newly formed China Yarlung Group depend on government investment. For them, this estimated 1.2 trillion yuan project represents an enormous pool of funding to divide among them. Some commentators say any Chinese megaproject costing more than 1 trillion yuan inevitably conceals deeply entrenched networks of elite corruption. As this 1.2 trillion yuan moves from the national budget to corporate groups, subcontractors, and design institutes, each layer can take enormous kickbacks. With the property market frozen and private businesses losing money, these state-owned engineering giants face severe surpluses of materials and capacity. They urgently need a trillion yuan project to replenish their finances and sustain vast networks of vested interests within the system. This also helps explain why geological survey firms have such strong incentives to falsify data. Once leaders issue a firm political order that construction must begin in 2025, the surveys can only reach one conclusion, suitable for project construction. Meanwhile, experts skilled at fabricating data, pleasing their superiors, and producing polished PowerPoint presentations gain both money and status. Geopolitically, the project takes the practice of advancing China's interests at its neighbors' expenses to an extreme. After entering India, the Yarlung Tsangpo becomes the Brahmaputra River, a lifeline for tens of millions of people in northeastern India and Bangladesh. Beijing's attempt to build a Yasha megaproject in a sensitive area just 31 miles from the border has caused deep alarm and opposition in neighboring countries. If a future landslide or earthquake triggers an ice collapse and causes China's dam to fail. Massive floods could rapidly destroy countless towns downstream in India. Such a disaster could even trigger a war between China and India. After Power China Chengdu's falsified surveys for the Hongqi Bridge came to light, decision-makers may have begun questioning the reliability of its Yasha survey reports and feasibility study. This top-rated survey and design institute has planned major national projects. Now the issue is how much of its work was manipulated and how much fabricated data supported its conclusion that the site was suitable for construction. This halt at the Yasha Hydropower Project reflects a broader cycle of unfinished construction across China. Xiongan New Area, promoted as a plan for the next millennium, remains sparsely populated. The heavily funded Hainan Free Trade Port resembles a ghost town. Official publicity presents these millennium plans and projects of the century as symbols of humanity's conquests of nature and the political system's superiority. But when political ambition overrides geological realities and the laws of physics, the result is often costly disasters and abandoned projects, rather than the promised world-leading achievements.