China’s dam project in Tibet worries India

China is planning a mega dam in Tibet able to produce triple the electricity generated by the Three Gorges — the world’s largest power station — stoking fears among environmentalists and in neighbouring India.

The dam will span the Brahmaputra River before the waterway leaves the Himalayas and flows into India, straddling the world’s longest and deepest canyon at an altitude of more than 1,500m.

The project in Tibet’s Medog County is expected to dwarf the record-breaking Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in central China, and is billed as able to produce 300 billion kilowatts of electricity each year.

It is mentioned in China’s strategic 14th Five-Year Plan, unveiled last month at an annual rubberstamp congress of top lawmakers. But the plan was short on details, a timeframe or budget.

The river is also home to two other projects far upstream, while six others are in the pipeline or under construction.

The “super dam”, however, is in a league of its own.

Beijing may justify the massive project as an environmentallyfriendly alternative to fossil fuels, but it risks provoking strong opposition from environmentalists the same way as the Three Gorges Dam, built between 1994 and 2012.

The Three Gorges created a reservoir and displaced 1.4 million inhabitants upstream.

New Delhi is also worried by the project.

The Chinese Communist Party is effectively in a position to control the origins of much of South Asia’s water supply, analysts say.

“Water wars are a key component of such warfare because they allow China to leverage its upstream Tibet-centred power over the most essential natural resource,” wrote political scientist Brahma Chellaney last month in the Times of India.

The risks of seismic activity would also make it a “ticking water bomb” for residents downstream, he said.