Three Gorges Dam relics. Some sites could not be moved because of their location, size, or design. For example, the hanging coffins site high in the Shen Nong Gorge is part of the cliffs. The United States Department of Defense reported that in Taiwan, "proponents of strikes against the mainland apparently hope that merely presenting credible threats to China's urban population or high-value targets, such as the Three Gorges Dam, will deter Chinese military coercion." The notion that the military in Taiwan would seek to destroy the dam provoked an angry response from the mainland Chinese media. People's Liberation Army General Liu Yuan
Three Gorges Dam the land in the area is experiencing erosion, depositing about 40 million tons of sediment into the Yangtze annually. Because the flow is slower above the dam, much of this sediment will now settle there instead of flowing downstream, and there will be less sediment downstream. The absence of silt downstream has three effects: Erosion in the reservoir, induced by rising water, causes frequent major landslides that have led to noticeable disturbance in the reservoir surface, including two incidents in May 2009 when somewhere between of material plunged into the flooded Wuxia Gorge of the Wu River. Also, in the