“By transferring such a significant volume of water away from the Han River Basin, the project is depriving the area of the most basic input it will need to develop in the years and decades to come,” said Britt Crow-Miller, a research assistant professor at Portland State University.[…]

The Danjiangkou reservoir gets its water from the Han River, a tributary of the Yangtze River which feeds several major cities in central China such as Wuhan, an economic power house in Hubei province sporting a $144 billion GDP.