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 neither a galloping horse nor a flight can run faster than a boat. Yuan Shansong () of the Eastern Jin dynasty wrote a "Record of Yichuan's Landscape", which depicts the Three Gorges' grandeur. He wrote, People were always warned literally or orally of the Gorges' swift currents, saying they are horrific, and no one praised the local landscape [as] beautiful. It's [not] till I came to the site that I felt quite gleeful and started to understand seeing is believing. The overlapping cliffs, the elegant peaks and the grotesque structures, they all constitute the scenery far from expression. The lush,