from post at:
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread...l-Superpower&p=3102317&viewfull=1#post3102317
For scale, note the large earth mover at edge, bottom center.
Eastern and central parts will be operational in 2014 after more than a decade of intense construction and testing. The Nile flow is just over 80 cubic kilometers per year. (reference at:
http://www.google.com/#fp=b1848aaff8811878&q=annual+flow+of+nile+river) and a cubic Km is 1000^3 cubic meters, or Nile moves 80 billion cubic meters vs. China is moving 44.8 billion cubic meters. I.e. the Nile moves less than twice as much water as China will but the Nile moves its water slightly more than twice a far. No other man-made water project come even close (not even within 3%) to what China has done to improve the economic health of the nation as world moves into the era of water shortages! China's "half Nile" does a trick nature's Nile can't do: It delivers water to the Beijing area 45 meters higher than its source! (2.8 billion kWh/year pumping energy) China started funding studies for this world's largest water project in 1950!
Lake Powell and Lake Mead supply much of the water needed by S. W. USA and they are going dry:
The US does not have an organizational structure to solve its largest water problem, with Congress mainly interested in the next election and not funding multi-decade-long water projects with first benefits long after they have left office. With cost of ~10% of China's 62 billion dollars, US could transfer water from the Great Lakes, mainly via existing rivers, to save the South West from disaster, but that will not be done by Congress.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography / University of California, San Diego says: "... There is a 50 percent chance Lake Mead, a key source of water for millions of people in the southwestern United States, will be dry by 2021 if climate changes as expected and future water usage is not curtailed, ... Without Lake Mead and neighboring Lake Powell, the Colorado River system has no buffer to sustain the population of the Southwest through an unusually dry year, or worse, a sustained drought. In such an event, water deliveries would become highly unstable and variable, ..." From:
http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/Releases/?releaseID=876
SUMMARY: Yes, economic power and ability to use it via multi-decade planning** leds to political power and ability to dominate the world.
** China has 10 "five-year" plans, each becoming precisely detailed and adjusted as they come closer to the present. The central committee of the CCP is elected for 10 year terms and often serves several. Its members mainly have advanced engineering degrees, although a couple are economists and geologists. Unlike the US Congress and administration, where >90% were educated as lawyers, there is not a single lawyer high up in the CCP!