China's hydropower plans are a test of its avowed good neighbourliness

Banyan
Dammed if they do

China's hydropower plans are a test of its avowed good neighbourliness

July 8th 2010

www.economist.com/node/16539240

IN YUNNAN in south-west China the biggest floods in a dozen years have
ended a long, brutal drought. For months here in Xishuangbanna, a glassy
Mekong had merely sauntered towards the border with Laos. River trade
came to a halt as vessels ran aground. But for two or three weeks now
the Mekong has been back to its usual roiling brown, and the cargo boats
throw up a huge bow wave as they inch upstream.

Full rivers are good news for everyone, but especially for China's
dam-builders. They have huge ambitions for hydropower from the three
great rivers—the Salween, the Mekong and the Yangzi—that come roaring
out of the Tibetan plateau and tumble down through northern Yunnan in
steep parallel gorges, each a mountain ridge apart. The rivers then wend
their separate ways before reaching the sea in very different places:
the Salween in Myanmar, the Mekong in southern Vietnam and the Yangzi
near Shanghai. In Yunnan these rivers and their valleys form one of the
world's most remarkable hotspots of biodiversity.

To the engineers who dominate China's leadership, the rivers' wildness
must seem an impertinence. On the Mekong alone China has planned or
built eight dams. In Xishuangbanna the new Jinghong dam has just started
operating. Further up, Xiaowan dam will be finished by 2013. It will be
the highest arch dam in the world, and China's biggest hydropower
project after the Three Gorges on the middle Yangzi. The reservoir
behind it is already filling up.

On the Salween are proposals for 13 dams. Unusually vociferous protests
about their social and environmental costs led the prime minister, Wen
Jiabao, to call a halt. Yet many locals have already been resettled, and
it is surely a matter of time before at least some of the proposals are
dusted off.

In general, scrutiny of China's water projects is scant, and the
government is in a hurry. It wants to add electricity-generating
capacity, lest China's breakneck growth be impeded. Giant hydropower
companies, with impeccable political connections, add their own layer of
secrecy. Risks attend those who question the lack of transparency.
Perhaps 500,000 locals, mainly ethnic minorities, are being displaced
and forcibly resettled. Those who protest are threatened with less
compensation, if not jail.

The Chinese press steers clear of dams with a barge-pole. Academics and
NGO representatives who oppose the dam-building on social or
environmental grounds do not want their names published. In private even
academics in favour of hydropower development complain that nearly all
relevant information, even the amount of rain that reaches them, is
treated as a state secret. (Though, they add, at China's meteorological
and rivers bureaus, even state secrets can be imparted if the price is
right.)

Until recently China was no less communicative towards downstream
neighbours, who have seen a sharp drop in Mekong levels in recent years.
Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam complain that China neither
consults nor informs them about what it is up to. For all that it
preaches harmony and good neighbourliness, China comes across as a
regional bully, with its foot on the Mekong's throat. The Mekong basin
is the greatest inland fishing region in the world. Distraught Thai,
Laotian and Cambodian fisherman and farmers blame Chinese dams for
killing off fish stocks, cutting irrigation and disrupting livelihoods.
Recently a /Bangkok Post/ editorial accused China of "Killing the Mekong".

In March China broke its silence over dams, denying that it was
responsible for reducing the Mekong's flow reaching downstream
neighbours. It blamed instead the drought, from which China has suffered
as much as anyone. The truth lies somewhere in between. Less than
one-sixth of the total Mekong catchment is in China, but that upstream
flow is crucial to neighbours during the dry season. China has held some
of the dry-season flow back.

The monsoon rains of the past month will help draw some of the
criticism's sting. So too, perhaps, will a possible easing of Chinese
secrecy. In April China defended itself (another first) at the Mekong
River Commission, the inter-governmental body supposed to resolve
disputes. And last month China took officials from Thailand, Laos,
Cambodia and Vietnam to view both Xiaowan and Jinghong dams. Banyan had
less luck. Near Jinghong nervous policemen ordered him to leg it before
he got so much as a glimpse of the structure.

Still, the shift in public diplomacy may mark a slightly broader
approach towards what China perceives to be in its national interest. At
the very least, the countries resentful of China's dams are also those
to which it hopes to sell the electricity. But a cynic might further
conclude that to the extent that upriver dams smooth a flow's seasonal
extremes, China's upriver projects actually make ones in downstream
countries more feasible, too. There are nearly a dozen plans to dam the
lower Mekong, and Chinese state construction companies want to be involved.

*Those in glassy waters shouldn't throw stones*

Such plans suggest that though China is getting all the brickbats,
downstream countries should face much closer scrutiny too. China, says a
water expert at the Asian Development Bank, is not to blame for all
their woes. For instance, the alarming salinisation of the Mekong delta,
Vietnam's rice-basket, appears to be happening not because of China, as
some Vietnamese claim, but at least in part because of Vietnam's own
hydropower projects nearby. Laos is expected soon officially to announce
its intention to build at least one Mekong dam, with potentially
devastating consequences for the migratory fish species that, among
other things, provide essential protein for many Cambodians. Pity the
poor wild rivers and their amazing diversity: dammed if the riparian
neighbours fail to co-operate, and damneder if they do.
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