China Is Stealthily Waging a Water War

Jan 15, 2018 | Brahma Chellaney
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While international attention remains on China's recidivist activities in the South China Sea's disputed waters, Beijing is also focusing quietly on other waters – of rivers that originate in Chinese-controlled territory such as Tibet and flow to other countries. As part of its broader strategy to corner natural resources, China's new obsession is freshwater, a life-creating and life-supporting resource whose growing shortages are casting a cloud over Asia's economic future. By building cascades of large dams on international rivers just before they leave its territory, China is re-engineering cross-border natural flows. Among the rivers it has targeted are the Mekong, the lifeline of Southeast Asia, and the Brahmaputra, the lifeblood for Bangladesh and northeastern India. With the world's most resource-hungry economy, China has gone into overdrive to appropriate natural resources. On the most essential resource, freshwater, it is seeking to become the upstream controller by manipulating transboundary flows through dams and other structures.