Less than a fortnight after China announced its decision to construct a super-mega hydroelectric project on the Yarlung Tsangpo river of Tibet near the Indian border facing Arunachal Pradesh, a strong earthquake jolted and caused severe damage in Shigatse and villages and towns around it. Shigatse is the second most prominent Tibetan city after capital Lhasa and is located halfway along the length of Tsangpo River through Tibet. The earthquake, measuring 6.8 to 7 on the Richter scale, has left over 130 people dead as per initial reports. This earthquake has once again revived world’s concerns about the safety of dams on Tibetan rivers which China has been building recklessly over past many decades to exploit Tibetan river to its advantage.
Many environment experts and seismologists have been already expressing doubts about China’s obsession with building mega dams on Tibetan rivers. Their main fear is that the Himalayan range is too fragile to handle the enormous weight of stored water and can cause immense damage to areas around these dams, especially those in the downstream regions. The security experts too are concerned about China’s capability of using the stored water in these dams as a ‘water-bomb’ against India, Bangladesh and other riparian countries in the event of a war or a critical political face off. The later fear is more real because China has already a history of using stored water as a ‘water-bomb’ by deliberately releasing its big quantities into India at least three times — twice in Arunachal and Himachal in 2000 and once in 2005 to Himachal Pradesh.
The Mega Obsession Of Xi Jinping
On December 25, China’s government run news agency Xinhua announced Beijing’s plans to construct a super mega dam and hydroelectric power project on Tibet’s Yarlung Tsangpo river which, after entering India, is called ‘Siyang’ and ‘Dihang’ in Arunachal Pradesh, ‘Brahmaputra’ in Assam and ‘Jamuna’ in Bangladesh. What is intriguing is the unprecedented dimensions of this dam and power project which is being presented as the darling project of President Xi Jinping. The installed capacity of the new powerhouse will be three times that of China’s Three Gorges Dam (TGD) which is already world’s biggest hydroelectric dam with 22.5 Giga Watts capacity and was constructed at a cost of $31.7bn in 2006. The new project is going to be a 60 GW powerhouse which is about three times the power production capacity of TGD and will cost $137 bn. The comparison of the new project with India’s similar projects is astounding as it will be about 111 times that of Bhakhra Nangal Dam; 60 times of Tehri Dam; and 8 to 9 times the installed capacity of top five Indian hydel power projects put together. China has plans to build two more projects on the same river in the same region of Tibet.
Following the announcement about the new super-mega dam, Rajnath Singh, India’s Defence Minister confirmed to the media that his government had already flagged India’s concerns about the safety of proposed dam which is going to be built just 30 km from the point where Tsangpo enters India in Arunachal Pradesh. But China’s spokesperson tried wash down these fears by claiming that all safety related studies have been done to allay such fears. But China’s plans to store the water and use a big part of this electricity to pump this water to various parts of China is bound to diminish the water flow of Brahmaputra to India and Bangladesh, leading to serious economic, social and political problems.
This type of projects have been in discussion since China occupied Tibet in 1951 but were kept in cold storage due to high costs and the complex technologies involved in their execution. But thanks to the huge cash flow in China’s kitty due to West’s policy of surrendering its capital, technology, production facilities and markets before China in their greed of quick bucks and cheaper products, money has ceased to be a problem for Beijing for such projects now. The completion of highly expensive and complex technological projects like the Three Gorges Dam in 2006 and the Gormo-Lhasa railway line in the same year have offered big enough technological experience to China to undertake such ambitious and complex projects in hand.
On November 29, 2020 China’s official English language international publication Global-Times had released some details of this project. It quoted Yan Zhiyong, Chairman of Power Construction Corporation of China, also known as POWERCHINA, saying that the project will be constructed along the last U-Bend turn of Brahmaputra and at the 2.4 km deep gorge near Metok county of Tibet which happens to be the deepest gorge in the world. It will use a 50 km straight section of the river bend along the Grand Canyon to build a giant tunnel to divert the water and use its gravitational fall through six large hydro power stations, laid along its 2.4 km fall at 400 meter drop distance from each other. All these units will collectively produce 300 billion kWh of electricity which is three times the installed capacity of Three Gorges Dam. “There is no parallel (of this dam) in history….” claimed Yan. “It is a project for national security, including water resources and domestic security,” he added.
A multipurpose tool
This project has a huge strategic value for Xi and China both internally as well as externally. Once completed, it will give China a potential blackmail tool in its dealings with India whom it considers as the biggest hurdle in the way of its Asian and world dominance. On the internal front China’s capacity of storage and transporting of water at such a gigantic level to other parts of China will be a welcome relief from China’s perpetually worsening water scarcity problem.
Even the most privileged cities like Beijing are facing serious water shortage since decades. China’s industrial rise has only made it worse across China. Due to over exploitation the underground water table has fallen by over 60 meters over past half century in Beijing itself. Yongding River, one of the two rivers supplying water to the Capital has been already abandoned due to its poor flow and heavy pollution levels caused by indiscriminate industrial overuse. Even a national river like the Yellow River now practically remains dry for over 250 days in a year.
Tibet: Water Tank of Asia
In such a situation it is natural for China to look towards its most precious colony Tibet which has won titles like the ‘THIRD POLE’ and ‘WATER TOWER OF ASIA’ due to its extremely rich water resources. Tibet is home to about 37 thousand glaciers and 40 to 60 percent of Himalayan seasonal snow. According to scientific estimates the Tibetan glaciers are spread over a hundred thousand sq km area and hold 1200 cubic kilometer of ice. Melting snow and ice in Tibet gradually release fresh water to 85 percent of Asia and to more than 50 percent of Asian population in over a dozen countries. World’s four of 10 largest rivers originate in Tibet. They are Yarlung Tsangpo (Ind. ‘Brahmaputra’), Dri-Chu (Ch. Yagtse), Zha-Chu (Ch. Mekong) and Huang Ho (Yellow River) originate in Tibet. Other major rivers like the Indus, Sutlej, Salween, Irawadi, Arun, Karnali, Kosi and Gandak etc too are Tibetan rivers. The countries fed by these rivers are Tibet, China, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam.
Chinese Plans
Official Chinese estimates in 1999 placed the water flowing from Yarlung Tsangpo every year to India and subsequently to Bangladesh at 600 billion cubic meters. It is equivalent to 12 times the total volume of Yellow River and hence has been branded as a ‘waste’ by many Chinese experts and agencies of China since decades. Guo Kai, the secretary-general of the Shuotian Canal Preparatory Committee, is one such Chinese enthusiast who has been pushing the idea of diverting water from Tibetan rivers to distant parts of China which are perpetually suffering from water shortages. His idea of diverting water from the Mekong, the Yangtse, the Salween and smaller rivers like the Dadu and Yalong to develop a huge storage in the Qinghai province and then supplying it to places as far as the Gobi Desert and Tianjing near Beijing has caught imagination of some senior CPC officials and water related agencies. His proposal of creating a 3700 km long ‘Shuotian Canal’ for transporting Yarlung Tsangpo water from Shuomalin of Tibet in Tsetang to Tianjin (112 km from Beijing) is believed to be the sparking idea behind the proposed ‘Super Dam’ on Yarlung Tsangpo in Medong. It is being seriously considered to use the electricity produced at this project to pump the water of its reservoirs to various parts of China through the ‘Shoutian Canal’.
China’s Water Hagemony
Since occupation of Tibet 74 years ago, China has been busy taming Tibetan rivers and constructing dams inside Tibet as well as in mainland China. Today, world’s more than 50 percent of large dams are in China. This has consistently made life difficult for downstream countries which are suffering water shortage due to China’s adamant behavior. For example, China has already constructed 11 mega dams over Mekong which is adding to water problems of Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Using its fat purse China has undertaken construction of dams and hydroelectric projects in many downstream countries like Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Pakistan and Nepal only to buy back the electricity. Many of these countries are finding these projects unviable because of high costs of construction, finance and manipulated prices of electricity by a bully partner China in connivance with corrupt local leaders and bureaucrats.
Need For A Common Front
This way China’s belligerent water policy has put all victim countries of Asia into a helpless situation. Unfortunately the United Nation’s Convention on the ‘Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses’, which was adopted in May 1997 and came to force in 2014, too is hardly of any consequence. China as well as many of these victim countries have not signed it. The only other way left for these countries is to join hands and make a common cause to confront China’s belligerence. The other hope for these countries is that China is forced to lift its colonial control over Tibet which happens to be the real root cause of China’s aggression and belligerence in Asia. That will rehabilitate Tibetan people’s rights and control over Tibet and its its natural resources. If that happens, then it will be the greatest relief for countries like India, Nepal and Bhutan who are forced to have China as their new neighbour following it’s occupation of Tibet — and surely a great succor for the rest of world.
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