CONSTRUCTION workers wearing wicker safety helmets stepped gingerly to the edge of a two-mile-deep gorge in southwestern China and watched giant boulders tumble into the Yangtze River far below.

“The work here is very dangerous and we’ve had plenty of casualties already,” a foreman in a sweat-stained tunic said. As he spoke, four massive explosions echoed through the gorge, sending clouds of dust into the mountain air.

Between these gorge walls, which soar towards snow-capped 4,600m (15,000ft) peaks, the Chinese Government wants to construct a huge new Yangtze barrier that will be even higher than the controversial Three Gorges Dam and create a lake 130 miles (209km) long. Engineers have furtively mapped the riverbed, and soon legions of cranes and cement mixers will move down the narrow road that these workers are carving from the gorge.

The Tiger Leaping Gorge Dam, which will cut through a Unesco Three Rivers World Heritage Site and displace up to 100,000 people, has prompted widespread protests. “The people building the dam don’t care that this is a protected site. Their interests are purely commercial,” Xiao Liangzhong, a leading environmentalist, said.

Among the dam’s backers are the regional government and Huaneng, the state power company — controlled by the son of Li Peng, the former Prime Minister — that helped to build the Three Gorges Dam. Unlike ten years ago when work began on the lower barrier, the company has quickly run into stiff local opposition. “People will simply refuse to move,” a walnut seller said.

The first house that will be lost to the rising water is the Wang family’s home. “It is said the water will rise higher than we can see from our living room but the Government hasn’t offered us any compensation,” a family member said.

The flow of the Yangtze through the Tiger Leaping Gorge marks its emergence from the Tibetan plateau and the start of its 1,400-mile path across China towards Shanghai. The dam is likely to flood part of the Tibetan area described as Shangri-La in James Hilton’s novel Lost Horizon.

The dreamy landscape of wooded hills and snowy peaks is one of China’s most popular tourist destinations and tour operators are among the dam’s strongest critics. “We even had a demonstration in front of the government offices,” said one in nearby Lijiang.

The builders of the new dam hope to solve two problems caused by China’s rapid industrialisation. Water is to be diverted to Kunming, Yunnan’s capital, where supplies are heavily polluted, and riverside turbines will help to meet growing demand for electricity in the region. Similar reasons led to the building of the 181m-high (594ft) Three Gorges Dam, to be finished in 2009.

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