Pan Jiazheng, a top hydraulic engineer and staunch advocate of the Three Gorges Dam, has died of cancer, aged 85, in Beijing.
As one of the first domestically trained engineers after the Communist Party came to power in 1949, Pan dedicated most of his life to dam construction and was awarded a national lifetime-achievement prize only last month. But he was best known for his pivotal role in the approval of the world's largest dam project nearly two decades ago and his enthusiastic defence of the country's most controversial project ever since.
While Xinhua hailed him as the most acclaimed hydraulic expert on the mainland, it was a view not shared by environmentalists and other dam opponents.
Pan's academic achievements, his critics say, were largely tainted by his public image as an apologist for politically driven projects, such as the Three Gorges and the massive South-North Water Diversion Project.
A native of Zhejiang province, Pan enrolled at Zhejiang University in 1946, majoring in civil engineering. Like many other hydropower engineers of his generation, Pan was apparently influenced by the Soviet view of dams as engineering marvels and a source of national pride by conquering nature, despite possible environmental and social impacts.
Pan was made a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1980 when he was 53.
In 1985, he became the technical chief for the feasibility study of the Three Gorges Dam Project at the recommendation of the water resources minister at the time, Qian Zhengying. While the dam has been touted as the country's most prestigious engineering project of the past three decades, it also attracted controversy from the outset when it was given a green light by Deng Xiaoping in 1982.
