The China-India ‘Water Wars’

Over the past several months, the chief of India’s northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh has been raising the alarm over a massive dam being built by China over a river critical to his state. Pema Khandu, the state’s chief minister, has damned the dam’s construction as a ticking “time bomb” that would not only put thousands of inhabitants in the areas downstream of it at risk but also threaten India’s water security.

“We can't trust China. We promote peace and non-violence and want good relations but, given the history, can we rely on China?” Pema said back in January, in some of his most pointed criticism of the dam. From India’s point-of-view it was a valid question, considering the country’s years of distrust with China, over a range of issues — particularly, Beijing’s aggressive claims on territories that New Delhi views as its own. Some parts of Arunachal Pradesh are at the centre of those disputes.

But January was a very different time in China-India relations, one when massive American tariffs had not yet managed to unify two bitter rivals.

India’s public outlook on the dam today is a muted one, with officials saying in parliament last week that they are “monitoring” the situation. But behind closed doors, India’s concerns run deep — deep enough for it to plan its own $13.2 billion dam to manage the risks from China’s $170 billion construction.

For the uninitiated, this tale of two dams began at least two decades ago — before Xi Jinping came to power — when in 2006 China first started looking into the potential for tapping the massive Yarlung Zangbo river (known as the Brahmaputra in India) for a “massive hydropower station”. China made the first firm move to begin the dam’s construction in 2021, approving plans for its construction as outlined in its 14th Five-Year Plan. And those moves ultimately culminated last month, when its construction officially began. China says the planned dam will be seismically bigger than its Three Gorges Dam, which is currently the largest in the world, by capacity. The planned dam — officially known as the The Medog (or Motuo) Hydropower Station is expected to generate over 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually — more than triple the capacity of the Three Gorges Dam. And China says its main goal is to produce the green energy necessary to meet its decarbonisation goals.

In India’s view, however, Chinese intentions could go far beyond a noble pivot to clean energy. New Delhi fears the dam, once complete, could be weaponised by Beijing to throttle the flow of Brahmaputra into the country. That’s because the dam is set to be made over an area where the river makes a "U" turn — or a ‘Great Bend’ – before entering India's Arunachal Pradesh. Indian officials estimate the dam will allow Beijing to divert as much as a third of the water that normally flows into the state. The impact of that diversion would be especially acute during the non-monsoon months, when heat waves turn swathes of Indian land barren.

Another big concern for India is the potential for China to create artificial floods in the event of disputes, should Beijing choose to release huge amounts of water as retribution. While that may sound extreme, Beijing has had a reputation for weaponising its dams in past conflicts with India.

In 2020, for instance, China blocked the natural flow of the Galwan River to prevent it from flowing into India following clashes along a disputed border in the area. Before that, after another border dispute in 2017, Beijing stopped sharing any hydrological data for the Brahmaputra river from upstream China during the monsoon season. Hydrological data can be crucial for flood prediction and mitigation as well as helping ascertain water supply levels to plan agricultural activities.

The potential impact from Chinese constructions is such that the Lowy Institute has previously said this “control over key rivers effectively gives China a chokehold on India’s economy.”

Meanwhile, China has also been accused of showing little regard for other nations that fall downstream of its constructions. Its eleven massive dams over the Mekong River, for instance, have left it being accused of creating a devastating impact on Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, that all depend on the river for their economies and food security. Asia Financial has previously reported how China’s actions on the Mekong have decimated the river’s passage through Southeast Asia.

It makes sense then for Delhi to now speed up plans for a dam to mitigate these potential threats. Creating its own dam just downstream from China’s would mean India could store water for a dry spell, and it would also give it a buffer to absorb any excess water released by China. India, on its part, claims it has known of China’s plans for the Brahmaputra since 1986. It has also been considering projects since at least 2020 to tackle its risks.

Delhi has, however, faced fierce and occasionally violent resistance from residents in Arunachal Pradesh, who fear their villages will be submerged and their way of life destroyed by any dam. Those fears will, however, take a backseat as a decade plagued by chip wars and trade wars sets course to end with potential ‘water wars’.

A dismal history

Aside from the political and security ramifications of these dams, they also can bring ecological disaster. The regions where India and China plan to set up their massive dams are ecologically fragile and are also home to large ethnic populations. Experts have previously said that this race for a "water grab" in the Himalayas can threaten the endangered species that inhabit the mountainous region while worsening the threat of drought to the Tibetan Plateau, which is already witnessing unprecedented impacts from climate change. The dams are also being constructed in regions prone to earthquakes and flooding, suggesting any natural disaster could wreak havoc on the communities settled downstream of these dams.

The water wars could mean that the “Himalayas become the most dammed region in the world”, one scientist told The Guardian back in 2013.

In India, those concerns have meant that tribal communities have said they will do whatever they can to prevent the construction of its dam. Some angry locals have resorted to damaging machinery belonging to surveyors for the potential dam, along with destroying a nearby bridge and looting the tents of police sent to guard the operation. Delhi’s chequered history of destroying swathes of communities through the construction of dams does not help. The construction of several dams across its fifth-longest river — the Narmada — has, for instance, left many tribal families landless and submerged 176 villages under massive floods. Protests against that dam have continued more than three decades later.

Meanwhile, China’s massive Three Gorges Dam points to Beijing’s failings in accounting for the environmental impact of its dams.

Experts note that the dam has failed to control floods after having to release water due to unprecedented river flows. That flooding has put the ecology of the Yangtze River basin in peril. The changes it caused to river flows has displaced more than a million people in the upstream and downstream areas of the dam. The destruction from the dam was such that in 2008, Chinese officials made a rare admission that the dam may be triggering landslides and altering entire ecosystems. “Despite 17 years since the Dam's completion, efforts to restore culture, environment, and ecology are ongoing,” experts from The Takshashila Institution institution say.

For the upcoming Medong dam, Chinese officials insist their “decision to build the project was made after rigorous scientific evaluation.” But with little known about the dam’s planned outlay, how rigorous their evaluation really is, essentially remains unknown.

• Prosecutors in Taiwan have charged three people for stealing trade secrets from chipmaker TSMC to help Japan’s Tokyo Electron.

• China, the world’s biggest carbon emitter, has seen its emissions fall by 1% in the first half of this year.

• Renewable energy adoption is surging in Indonesia, Australia and Africa, with the three committing to greater use of solar energy.
  

• And India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani plans to list his telecoms and digital company Jio Platforms – a business valued at over $100 billion – by the middle of 2026.