Abstract: This paper gives a view in retrospect of hydropower dam safety management by the Chinese government since 1980s of 20th century, focusing on the periodic dam safety inspection and its result. The practice proves that the periodic dam safety inspection be one of effective means to strengthen the dam safety monitoring and management and raise the dam safety level. Along with China’s reform and opening up campaign, significant changes have taken place in China’s power industry structure, in which the previous electric power sector mixing up functions of the government and enterprise has been remodeled into different power industry enterprises separating government function from enterprise management. And the responsibility for dam safety has been rested on dam owners, i.e., he who owns a dam should assume responsibility of ensuring safety of the dam. As ensuring safety of dams is a part of public safety, not only should dam owners take the responsibility for dam safety, but the government should also have accountability to carry out effective supervision. The paper also introduces the current development of the Large Dam Safety Supervision Center in dealing with information and establishing information network, and the unremitting effort in raising the level of China’s hydropower dam safety management by applying the state of the art.

摘要： 本文简要回顾我国政府20世纪80年代以来为加强水电站大坝安全管理所采取的一系列措施，对其中开展水电站大坝安全定期检查及其成效作了较为重点的阐述，实践证明，大坝安全定期检查是政府加强对大坝安全管理监察，提高大坝安全度行之有效的办法。随着我国改革开放的深入发展，90年代末，电力工业体制发生重大变化，本来政企合一的国家电力行业，改变成为政企分开的电力企业，水电站大坝安全实行业主责任制，即“谁管的水电站，谁承担大坝安全的责任”，由于水电站大坝安全属于公共安全，为此不仅企业对大坝安全负有不可推卸的责任，政府还必须对