China's drive to control water resources
As regular subscribers will know, we watch closely the proceedings of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) as they provide a useful barometer of evolving US concerns about China. The latest hearings, on 26 January, looked at “China’s Global Quest for Resources and Implications for the United States”. There was much familiar evidence about China’s seemingly insatiable appetite and restless search for raw materials and energy, and how that might adversely impact the United States. However, the testimony that really caught our attention concerned China’s drive to develop water resources at the expense of its immediate neighbours. We were also, in an entirely different way, rather taken by testimony from an associate professor at the US Naval War College which seemed to contradict one of the key justifications for the US’s much-publicized “rebalancing” of its security focus towards the Asia-Pacific.
The evidence about the effect of China’s water policies on its neighbours was genuinely alarming, even if some of it is familiar; and the fact that the most compelling evidence on China’s activities to secure water resources came from an Indian specialist gives added resonance to this week’s statement by US director of national intelligence James Clapper that India is preparing for a possible border conflict with China. Clapper told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on 31 January: "Despite public statements intended to downplay tensions between India and China, we judge that India is increasingly concerned about China's posture along their disputed border and Beijing's perceived aggressive posture in the Indian Ocean and Asia-Pacific region". He added: "The Indian Army believes a major Sino-Indian conflict is not imminent, but the Indian military is strengthening its forces in preparation to fight a limited conflict along the disputed border, and is working to balance Chinese power projection in the Indian Ocean."
If Clapper is right, and a limited border conflict between China and India is in the offing, then China’s drive to harness the water resources of the Tibetan Plateau at the expense of its neighbours will be at the heart of it, not just because of the effects on downstream countries but also because of the build-up of infrastructure, close to the Indian border, that is linked to these developments. That the question of Chinese infrastructure development is a growing concern to India was made by India’s Defence Minister AK Antony during questioning in parliament about border issues in late November. On 28 November, 32 members of the Indian parliament raised the question of China’s build up of infrastructure in border regions, and Antony responded by saying: “Required measures are being undertaken to upgrade our capabilities to achieve the desired defence preparedness to safeguard sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of India.” He also said that India was itself constructing strategic infrastructure “in the north-eastern region in areas close to the international border with China”.
China’s water problem was outlined for the Commission by Elizabeth Economy of the Asia Studies Council on Foreign Relations. She explained that as many as 40 mid- to large-sized Chinese cities in northern China, including Beijing, have “crisis-level” water shortages. As a result of the shortages, cities in northern and western China have been drawing on groundwater reserves to such an extent that a 60,000 sq km area of the North China Plain is suffering from subsidence. The water table here is falling by a metre a year. Furthermore, as a result of industrialization and urbanization 90% of groundwater is polluted by sewage, refuse, and industrial waste. It is thought that 10 provinces in China, between them accounting for 45% of the country’s GDP (including 40% of agricultural output), have less than 1,000 cubic metres of water per person per year, which is the World Bank’s water poverty level.
It is this background that has driven China increasingly to develop the headwaters of rivers that flow into neighbouring countries in a way that is damaging to those countries. China is one of only three countries (along with Burundi and Turkey) not to have signed the 1997 United Nations Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses. As Elizabeth Economy put it: “China is a central player in many of the controversies surrounding shared water resources in Central, South, and Southeast Asia. Several of these conflicts, such as those centred on the water resources of the Mekong, Irtysh, and Brahmaputra Rivers are raising regional tensions as China develops plans for its upstream reserves that will have dramatic impacts on the lower reaches.” Countries affected by China’s activities include India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Russia, and Kazakhstan.
The written testimony provided by Professor Brahma Chellaney from the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi was even more revealing. He starts by making the point that the international focus on China’s global search for energy and raw materials has obscured a potentially far more serious problem, namely “the way in which it has systematically sought to corner the resources of international rivers”. He also makes the obvious, but nonetheless key point that while China “can scour the world for oil, natural gas, and mineral ores to keep its economic machine humming, it does not have the same choice on water, which cannot be secured through international trade deals”. So China has started damming international rivers in a way that seriously undermines the interests of its neighbours. The problem is compounded by its over-damming of internal rivers and its inter-river and inter-basin water transfer projects which are “exacting heavy environmental costs [and] causing river depletion and pollution of water”.
Having perpetrated that damage, China is now switching its attention to transnational rivers that flow into neighbouring countries, and on which those countries depend. It has constructed upstream dams on the Mekong, Salween, Brahmaputra, Arun, Irtysh, and Amur rivers. And the projects are huge. For instance, its latest dams on the Mekong River are the 4,200-megawatt Xiaowan and the 5,850-megawatt Nuozhadu. The Mekong originates in central Tibet and flows through China’s Yunnan province before flowing through Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. It is said to support around 70m people along its basin. China has built, or is building, a total of 21 hydro-power plants on the Mekong in Tibet alone. Downstream in Thailand, fishing boats can be seen stranded on the shores of the dried-out river.
A dam planned for the Brahmaputra River at Metog (close to the disputed border with India) will be twice as large as the vast 18,300-megawatt Three Gorges Dam. Another mega dam is to be built at Daduqia, also close to the border with India. India has identified 24 Chinese projects in progress on the Brahmaputra, the most important river of Bangladesh.
Then there is the “Great Western Route” diversion, which is planned to take the waters of the Brahmaputra, Salween, Mekong, and three Yangtze tributaries to the Yellow River, which is the main river of northern China.
Many of China’s new projects are in areas of already high ethnic tension, such as Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and (above all) Tibet. The Tibetan Plateau is sometimes referred to as ‘The Water Tower of Asia’, and it is home to the headwaters of major rivers that flow into India, Bangladesh, China, Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand, Myanmar, and Vietnam. In his book Water, Asia’s New Battleground, Professor Chellaney says that the Tibetan Plateau “makes China a potential water power in the way that Saudi Arabia is an oil power”. That is why, of course, no matter how many Tibetan monks burn themselves in protest at Chinese rule, Tibet will never be free.
Away from water, it was the testimony given by Lynn J Goldstein from the US Naval War College that caught our eye. Goldstein’s testimony was on China’s fisheries management in the East China and South China Seas, and in response to a question about her recommendations to Congress she said: “Contrary to conventional wisdom, the US government (including Congress) should actually be less concerned with the disputes in the East China Sea and South China Sea. These disputes do not directly involve US national security interests, and the US should avoid triggering inadvertent escalation of these conflicts by intervening.”
What is most attention-grabbing about this assessment is that it would seem to be entirely at odds with the US’s recently expressed security strategy to “rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region”. If the US does, indeed, see the Western Pacific as its most important strategic challenge, then territorial disputes between China and its neighbours (for the most part strong American allies) in the East China Sea and South China Sea would seem to be a matter of more not less concern. If nothing else, it is an eye-catching view to be coming from the US Naval War College, even if there was a disclaimer saying that the views expressed were personal and not those of the US Navy. JdeC.