Before 1949, China had only 22 of the 5,000 large dams worldwide. Today, China’s top water resources official boasts that the country has since built 94,877 dams of various sizes.What’s surprising, however, is that the number of dams cited by Minister of Water Resources Li Guoying has actually dropped by 3,689 since the end of 2020, when authorities reported 98,566 dams.
Why has the number of reservoirs decreased significantly in just a few years? Were some of them destroyed during floods?
Or is there another reason—perhaps one the public isn’t supposed to know about?
Numerous Dams
China currently has more dams than any other country in the world—nearly half of all global dams are located there. Despite ongoing efforts to build new dams, the total number is, paradoxically, declining.
By the end of 2020, China reported having 98,566 dams of various types, an exponential increase compared to the 1949 figure.
In terms of the age of these dams, 87.1 percent of them were constructed before 1979, and nearly 48 percent were built before 1969, meaning roughly half are more than 50 years old, according to a research paper published on China’s Hydro-Science and Engineering Journal in February 2023.
However, as of 2025, the number of dams declined from nearly 99,000 in 2020 to 94,877.
These reservoirs are supposed to serve various functions—flood control, power generation, irrigation, water supply, navigation, tourism, and fisheries. Among these, flood prevention and drought relief are considered the primary purposes. The numerous floods and dam failures in China, however, show that the dams have fulfilled neither of these functions.
CCP’s Top Leader Acknowledges Deficient Dams
A 2024 joint directive issued by six government departments, titled “Notice on Strengthening the Safety Management of Dams,” noted that Xi Jinping acknowledged that China has too many high and deficient dams that potentially threaten the country.
It is rare to see the top leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) commenting directly on the danger posed by Chinese dams.
Xi’s concerns could become a reality based on the following information.
The International Commission on Large Dams says large dams are those greater than 15 meters in height with a storage capacity greater than 3 million cubic meters. There are about 50,000 large dams in the world, half of them in China, according to the non-governmental Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.
In addition, many of China’s dams are much higher than that. A 2023 Chinese science report claims that China has 232 dams taller than 100 meters, including 23 classified as “super-high” dams, exceeding 200 meters. Six of the world’s eleven tallest dams are located in China.
