(TibetanReview.net, Jan26’25) –As the conundrum about the geological and geostrategic dangers arising from the ongoing construction of the Yarlung Tsangpo super dam, the world’s largest, refuses to die down, China has again sought to reassure downstream India that it will not try to benefit at the “expense of its neighbours”. However, Beijing will sound a bit more convincing if it signs legally binding treaties on sharing of transnational rivers, which it, however, refuses.
Given the project’s location in a seismically active Himalayan area and China’s uneasy ties with India, the dam is seen as both a natural disaster waiting to happen and a hydrological weapon of mass destruction in China’s hand.
Wang Lei, the charge d’affaires at the Chinese embassy in India, tried to address these concerns in an Indianexpress.com article Jan 23 in which he wrote that critics of the project were wrong to characterise it as a “Chinese weapon”.
“China sticks to the policy of forging friendships and partnerships with its neighbours. It never pursues the maximisation of unilateral interests, let alone benefits for itself at the expense of its neighbours. China does not and will never seek ‘water hegemony’,” Wang wrote.
He added that China had established over 50 water resource management agreements with neighbouring countries and created 10 cross-border institutions to promote cooperative river development and ecological protection.
But as pointed out by Chief Minister Pema Khandu of Arunachal Pradesh at a seminar in the state’s legislative building on Jan 24, China refuses to enter into binding international water treaties and has been selective in sharing of hydrological data.
“China adheres to a responsible attitude towards cross-border river development and pursues a policy of balancing utilisation and protection,” Wang wrote.
He reiterated China’s position that the project had undergone a rigorous assessment and would prioritise biodiversity and the protection of its ecosystem.
He added that it would include a disaster prevention system, and aimed to support global low-carbon development and meet China’s “dual carbon” goals of reaching peak emissions by 2030 and net-zero by 2060.
However, Wang has said nothing on the fact that the project is being sited on a known seismically active zone; that the Jan 7 earthquake in Tibet’s Mt Everest county of Dingri had resulted in damages to several dams serious enough to warrant the evacuation of some 1,500 villagers.
The Yarlung Tsangpo super dam, being guilt in Tibet’s Metog county, just before the river enters India, is said to be three times the size of the world’s current largest one, The Three Gorges Dam. It aims to generate over 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, which is three times the output of the Three Gorges Dam, powering 300 million homes.