Scientists have mulled plans for a south-north transfer ever since Mao’s famous 1953 proclamation, and Ye says it fits with the government’s overall philosophy. “China is driven by engineers,” says Ye. “Mao said, ‘Man can overcome nature.’ ” But it wasn’t until the early 1990s, as China’s economy began to heat up and the desiccation of northern China accelerated, that the first feasibility studies were conducted. The Communist Party leadership gave its blessing in 1995, when then-Premier Li Peng, a hydrological engineer who was also a force behind the Three Gorges dam, predicted that the project would “benefit dozens of Chinese generations.”