Dinosaur Dams: The Revival of Historical Projects in China's Global Hydropower Boom

Hydroelectric dams are a central focus of Chinese development finance in the 21st century, promoted as renewable infrastructure that supports a global green energy transition. Yet mega dams around the world have faced numerous social, environmental and political challenges, inhibiting not only these projects’ contributions to the green transition goals that serve to justify them, but also fuelling critiques which single out Chinese entities as producers of harmful projects. This article investigates social and environmental risks embedded in Chinese‐financed hydroelectric megaprojects by systematically tracing the origins of their designs, revealing that of the 43 large dams financed by China Development Bank and China Export‐Import Bank, more than half rely on historical designs developed decades earlier by multilateral development banks or colonial powers. Three case studies — Coca Codo Sinclair (Ecuador), Souapiti (Guinea) and Jatigede (Indonesia) — demonstrate how the reuse of archaic studies contributes to socio‐environmental harm in the present day, reflecting a political economy of expedient project delivery that privileges shovel‐ready plans. Based on these findings, the author argues that rather than rupturing with prior development models, Chinese finance has served to revive previously delayed or discarded hydropower futures.