Myitsone Dam Irrawaddy projects during the contracted 50 years, more than CPI's return on investment during the fifty years Chinese operation period according to the President of CPI. However, the government economic calculations have been criticized for not considering potential environmental and societal impacts. The dam was planned to be a concrete faced rock-fill dam high and long, and projected to produce 6,000 MW of electricity by 2017. This is equivalent to 27% of the output of the Three Gorges Dam In China, the world's largest electricity-generating plant of any kind. Minister of Electric Power Zaw Min claimed that the dam was
Three Gorges with terrain lowering gradually from south to north. The western and eastern parts of the area, between the southern mountains and Bashan Mountain (), in the north, are comparatively lower; and in the past, the river flowed to the east through the region. As the crust of the locality continued to rise, the river's erosion intensified, and the Three Gorges were carved. The natural beauty of the Three Gorges along the Yangtze River has been appreciated for hundreds of years. In the Northern Wei (北魏) dynasty, Li Daoyuan (郦道元) described them in his work "Shui Jing Zhu" (水经注), or the