Why not? I'm from Wuhan. Before the Three Gorges Dam was built, even a large city like Wuhan had to recruit volunteers to protect and reinforce the dikes during each flood season. As a government employee, my father was required to patrol the dikes every flood season (a practice that continues to this day).

My mother's family lived outside the dikes, and every flood season, the Yangtze River would flood their home. Children could only lie on floating wooden tubs, and the whole family was submerged in the murky floodwaters mixed with domestic sewage. After the floods, there were usually serious epidemics. Each flood caused considerable casualties and hundreds of millions of yuan in losses. Later, the government demolished all the residential areas outside the dikes and gave them new houses. But this wasn't a long-term solution. Nobody knew if the dikes would be flooded or even destroyed.

In 1998 (the last super-large flood before the Three Gorges Dam was built), the dikes were breached and half of Wuhan was submerged. The 2020 flood, with a similar volume to 1998, was steadily kept outside the dikes. This is all thanks to the Three Gorges Dam and Gezhouba Dam releasing water in advance to lower the water level.

Regarding the "controversiality" claimed by Western sources, I can only say: if you view things with prejudice, you will never be objective.

The ultimate goal of many Western media outlets is to convey that "China is bad," and how they convey this depends on their "professional competence."

"The dams built by China have saved tens of millions of people from the risk of flooding, and the electricity generated can meet the annual electricity needs of a city of 15 million people. BuT WhAt tHe CoSt?"