The Quandary of the Multipurpose Dam in Cold War Taiwan

• In Event: Water Scarcity and Adaptation. Science, Technology and Society during the Cold War

English Abstract

When construction commenced on the massive Shimen Dam in 1955, Taiwan’s ruling Nationalist regime promoted it as a signal infrastructural achievement. Despite the island’s wet climate, Taiwan struggled after World War II to meet growing demand for water brought on by urbanization and population growth. As a multipurpose dam, the Shimen Dam promised to provision water for agricultural, industrial, and household use while also generating electricity and preventing floods. This versatility would bolster Taiwan’s position as a bulwark against communism—an imperative for both Nationalist Republic of China leaders and the U.S. backers who provided the technical and financial means to build the dam.

Yet as construction neared completion in 1963, a disastrous flood laid bare the limits of the dam’s functions and the contradictions underlying the multiple purposes it was supposed to perform. This paper investigates how a range of experts and political actors in Cold War Taiwan situated massive infrastructure as a protean but delicate tool of development. Engineers disagreed over which of the multiple purposes ought to take precedence. Activists agitating for Taiwanese independence saw flooding as evidence of the Nationalist regime’s weakness. Few noted it at the time, but the Shimen Dam also displaced indigenous peoples and subjected upstream areas to state scrutiny in new, invasive ways. By accounting for these diverse trends, I use the example of the Shimen Dam as a case study in the global expansion of multipurpose large dams in the early Cold War.

Author

• John Kanbayashi, University of Pennsylvania