China is building a dam on the Brahmaputra in Tibet, which will be thrice the size of the Three Gorges project. It will mean China has control over flow of the water into India, raising serious security and economic concerns. What’s more, it lies on an earthquake fault zone and presents a threat to the riverine ecology as well as local communities. Please listen to the latest episode of All Indians Matter.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
[00:00:00] Du liegst in der Badewanne und hörst deinen Podcast, doch hui, das Plätschern des Wassers wird zum Meeres rauschen und plötzlich fliegst du in den Süden. Ägypten, Kanaren, Griechenland, Türkei, Karibik. Der warme Sand zwischen den Zehen und kühles Getränk in der Hand und die Sonne auf der Haut. Nicht träumen, Altus buchen. Alles drin, alles gut, alles für dich. Altus, alles aber günstig. Jetzt im Reisebüro oder auf altus.de.
[00:00:32] China is at it again. It has found a new way to provoke India. This time, not with troop deployments, but with a dam. China is building a new dam, the world's biggest. And they are building it right next to the disputed border with India. On the lower reaches of the Yarlung-Zangbo River, the same river that is called the Brahmaputra in India. Why is China building the dam? Because it wants to weaponise the Brahmaputra. It wants to control the flow of water. It wants to dictate where the river can go.
[00:01:00] For India, there is another point of concern and that is Arunachal Pradesh. China says the state belongs to it. The claim is baseless. India will have to double down on infrastructure development. Roads, dams, border villages, they are all now strategic assets. Hello and welcome to All Indians Matter. I am Ashraf Engineer. Fresh tension has been infused into India's very edgy relationship with China.
[00:01:23] China is proceeding with the construction of the world's largest dam, which is also the planet's biggest infrastructure project, costing $137 billion on the Yarlung-Zangbo River in Tibet. It is three times the size of the Three Gorges Dam and will be located in one of the deepest gorges on earth. Yarlung-Zangbo is the Tibetan name of the Brahmaputra and the dam is close to the Indian border. The gorge on which the dam will be built is where the Brahmaputra makes a big U-turn to flow into Arunachal Pradesh and then on to Bangladesh.
[00:01:52] With China already operationalising the Zam hydropower station, the largest in Tibet in 2015, India is concerned that the dam on the Brahmaputra will enable China to control or divert water flow into India and release massive amounts to flood border areas if hostilities break out. The Lowy Institute and Australian think tank said in a 2020 report that control over rivers in the Tibetan plateau effectively gives China a chokehold on India's economy.
[00:02:18] China's foreign ministry responded to India's concerns by asserting that China had a right to dam the river and had considered all downstream impacts. India's concerns are not out of place. China has in the past built at least 11 dams over the Mekong River that have caused severe droughts in neighbouring Vietnam, Laos and Thailand.
[00:02:44] Let's consider how the dam will work and also the strategic nature of the Brahmaputra. The lower reaches of the project feature a vertical drop of 2000 metres stretching over a 50 km distance. This represents a potential of 70 million kilowatts. To put it in perspective, that's more than three Three Gorges dams which has an installed capacity of 22.5 million kilowatts.
[00:03:05] To harness this hydropower, four to six 20-kilometer long tunnels would be drilled through the Namcha-Bharwa mountain to divert half of the river's flow at about 2000 cubic metres per second. The Brahmaputra can be viewed as a Himalayan river basin that spans four countries. China is the uppermost. India and Bhutan come next. And finally Bangladesh. It is from Bangladesh that the river drains into the Bay of Bengal. All these countries have major water projects planned or operational in the river basin.
[00:03:32] These include hydropower dams, embankments for river control, irrigation dams and barrages. These are also seen as projections of national power symbols of countries' control over natural resources. China has complete control over Tibet's rivers and deploys hydropower development as it sees fit. So, the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River and the Zhangmu Dam on the Yarlong Zhangpo are often positioned as state symbols by the political leadership. The grandstanding apart, there are serious environmental concerns around the latest Yarlong Zhangbo project.
[00:04:02] Experts have pointed out that the 60 gigawatt project lies in an earthquake fault zone. They have said that there are real risks of flooding and structural collapse, particularly in the event of an earthquake. In fact, just two weeks after China announced the project in late December 2024, Tibet suffered a massive 6.8 magnitude earthquake that killed 126 and injured 180. That was followed two days later by a 5.5 magnitude aftershock.
[00:04:28] The epicenter was 1200 kilometers from the dam site but environmentalists say the entire region has suffered a series of quakes in the past few decades. The Tibetan Plateau frequently experiences earthquakes because it is located over tectonic plates. Beijing simply said that the project was safe and prioritized ecological protection. India's foreign ministry has conveyed its concerns to Beijing which includes a protest about the creation of two new counties, one of which includes a disputed area claimed by India.
[00:04:55] Let's not forget, the relations between the two countries have been strained after deadly border clashes in 2020. While an agreement to pull troops back was reached and there has been diplomatic progress since then, both sides are wary. Coming back to the river projects, India and China established the expert level mechanism in 2006 to deal with issues related to trans-border rivers. Under this mechanism, China provides India with hydrological information on the Brahmaputra and Sattalich during flood seasons.
[00:05:22] This data sharing figured in talks between India's national security advisor Ajit Doval and Chinese foreign minister Wong Yeh last December. Other than the ecological and security concerns, the dam could also impact communities living along the river system. These communities adapted as the river shaped and shifted over the centuries but dams built by China, India and Bhutan mean that these communities cannot use their traditional knowledge about the river system meaningfully. The projects have affected traditional livelihoods in Tibet as well as India, Bhutan and Bangladesh.
[00:05:52] The perennial downstream flow of the Brahmaputra into India and Bangladesh depends on the flow of the Yarlong Zhangbo. Its blocking, so that China can operate the dam, will change surface water levels, monsoon patterns and groundwater systems. This too will affect downstream agrarian communities. There is also a fear that the dam could displace them. China has built several dams in Tibet which it annexed in the 1950s. The dams are viewed as an example of Beijing's exploitation of Tibetans and their land.
[00:06:19] Not too long ago, the Chinese government arrested hundreds of Tibetans who were protesting against the Gangtou Dam project. Many of them were beaten and seriously injured. The Gangtou Dam would displace several villages and submerge ancient monasteries that are home to sacred Buddhist relics. Beijing claimed it had relocated and compensated locals and moved the relics to safety. As far as the Yarlong Zhangbo Dam is concerned, China has not said how many people it would displace. For perspective, the Three Gorges Dam necessitated the resettlement of 1.4 million.
[00:06:49] Tibet's river systems are critical not just to China, India, Bhutan and Bangladesh but also to the Earth's cryosphere. It comprises permafrost and glaciers and systems directing climate and precipitation pathways such as the monsoon. As the climate changes, what are known as glacial lake outburst floods have gotten more frequent in the Himalayas. This was brought into focus with the Chungtou Dam collapse in Sikkim in October 2023. The collapse devastated life and property in downstream communities.
[00:07:16] The dams being built now are essentially a territorialization of river systems and it breaks their natural evolution. This in turn affects agricultural and pastoral communities, the ecology and wetland systems. If such construction continues, the Brahmaputra Basin will go from ethereal landscape to worrying resescape.