Why a Chinese TVA?
In 1933, when President Franklin Roosevelt signed the legislation that created the Tennessee Valley Authority, fewer than 3 percent of the households in the Tennessee Valley had electricity. Malaria afflicted up to 30 percent of the population in some areas, and the average expenditure per child for education was about one third of that of the United States as a whole. The average farmer’s income in the valley was $639, compared to the national average of $1,835. Conditions were little different than those in Third World nations around the globe. The seven-state Tennessee Valley was at the mercy of the ravages of nature. The periodic flooding of the Tennessee River prevented the development of cities along the river’s banks, leaving small and isolated towns. Unchecked fires burned 10 percent of the woodlands every year, and because of soil depletion, 4.5 million acres were on the decline, and 300,000 acres were nearly destroyed. The TVA changed the valley dramatically. In the eight yea
