For those of you who haven't yet twigged to just how scaldingly racist mainland Chinese can be, here's a classic example:

"They shouldn't be living totally detached from the modern world," said Mr. Wu, a deputy director general of the Yunnan Development Planning Commission. "If it were not for the founding of the People's Republic, these people would still be living a primitive way of life, like monkeys or ape-men."

The government of the Chinese East is busily raping the westlands. Sounds a bit like the American 19th Century, doesn't it? Rapid industrialization always comes with a hefty price-tag. I suppose the demographic and wealth gains are worth it, but the people paying are only occasionally the ones reaping the benefit. To be strictly honest, the peasants who will be drowned out of their farmlands sound like pretty marginal subsistence farmers - the very sorts of folk whose economic demise are inevitable, like the Appalachian hollows-folk who lost their own lands to the TWA in the 1930s.