10 February 2025

China’s planned megadam ignores both environmental risks and promises made

Very few news items have generated as much ink as the announcement of Beijing’s approval of the construction of a mega hydropower project (HPP), which could produce three times more energy than the Three Gorges Dam, on the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet. After it was reported by the Xinhua news agency on 26 December last year, innumerable comments started pouring in from the Indian media.

Interestingly, the Chinese report did not specify when construction would start and what type of hydropower plant (or plants) would be built.

The project has been in the pipeline for decades. In November 2020, Beijing had included the survey of the Great Bend of the Yarlung Tsangpo (which becomes the Siang in Arunachal Pradesh and then the Brahmaputra) in China’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25). When The Global Times announced that Beijing was going to build a cascade of nine large HPPs on the Yarlung Tsangpo, human rights groups raised concerns, fearing displacement of locals and adverse environmental impact on the downstream countries of India and Bangladesh.

The point remains that despite the innumerable articles and experts’ comments, one knows practically nothing about the technical and geographical aspects of the project.

In 2020, Yan Zhiyong, then chairman of the Chinese state-owned Power Construction Corporation of China, had indicated that the Great Bend of the Yarlung Tsangpo was the most hydropower-rich region in the world: “The lower reaches area features a vertical drop of 2,000 meters over a 50 km distance, representing nearly 70 million kilowatts of resources that could be developed—that is more than three Three Gorges Dams with an installed capacity of 22.5 million kilowatts,” he pointed out. Four years ago, it was also clear that the idea of a single dam had been abandoned for a series of nine or ten large run-of-the-river HPPs with minimum reservoirs.

Why has the mega-dam concept returned now? Nobody knows the answer. One possibility is that the story could have been planted by China to spread fear downstream, in India in particular.

Seismicity of the Himalayan Belt

Coincidentally, less than two weeks later, on 7 January, an earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale struck Tingri County, near Shigatse in Central Tibet. According to Chinese sources, at least 126 people were killed and 338 were injured in the region, although the true death toll could be higher. The earthquake was the biggest on the Tibetan plateau (and in China) since the 2021 Maduo earthquake in Qinghai Province, also known as 5.22 (May 22). While no casualties were reported from this earthquake, the Jishishan earthquake (in Gansu) in December 2023 caused 151 deaths and 982 injuries, while the 2014 Ludian earthquake (in Yunnan) killed 615 people and injured 2,400 others, with over 12,000 houses destroyed. According to the China Earthquake Networks Centre (CENC), “Since 1950, 21 earthquakes above magnitude 6 have happened in the Lhasa region, with a maximum magnitude of 6.9.”

Closer to India, the seismicity of the Great Bend of the Yarlung Tsangpo and the Himalaya, in general, has been one of the main objections to any mega (or even large) projects in the area. However, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning denied that the planned megastructure could have an effect on India claiming China “has always adhered to a responsible attitude toward the development of cross-border rivers”. The earthquake in Tingri suggests, however, that the issue is indeed a serious one.

On 15 August 1950, the Assam-Tibet Earthquake of magnitude 8.7 took place in what is today’s Lohit and Anjaw districts of Arunachal Pradesh. The Dalai Lama, who was 15 at the time, noted in his memoirs: “It was like an artillery barrage—which is what we assumed to be the cause of both the tremors and the noise: a test of some sort being carried out by the Tibetan army… Some people reported seeing a strange red glow in the skies in the direction from which the noise came….”

The 1950 quake happened not very far from the Great Bend (and Upper Siang) and changed the course of the river. The seismicity is the same across the entire region. Different avatars of the HPP project have been rejected by the Chinese scientists over the years but the problem in China is that the ‘dam lobbies’, which are still very active in China, and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which push to construct dams because of the lot of money involved. Will scientific thinking and common sense, or the energy lobbies and money power prevail? That is the real question.

Evacuation in the Shigatse Area

Though it is true that the development of hydropower “has undergone several decades of in-depth research,” as the spokesperson Mao put it, the claim that the new development, if it happens, will have no implications for the areas downstream has to be doubted. This, even though the area where the HPPs are planned – located between the town of Pai in Nyingchi City and Drepung (Beibeng) near the Indian border (Upper Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh) – is sparsely inhabited.

However, ten days after the latest earthquake, Reuters reported that Chinese authorities had detected cracks in five out of 14 hydropower dams inspected since the earthquake. The agency quoted a Chinese official in Tibet saying that of the five affected dams, three had since been emptied. In Tingri county itself the walls of one dam had tilted prompting the evacuation of about 1,500 people from six villages downstream.

The general lack of details is confusing, as there is no large hydropower plants in Western and Central Tibet, except the small Ngari dam located just outside Gar (Chinese, Shiquanhe) on the Indus River and a newly commissioned dam near Purang (north of the trijunction Nepal-Tibet-India). There are no other large dams.

It appears that the Reuters news item may be referring to the Lahlo Water Conservancy Hub and Associated Irrigation District Project, located in Lahlo (Chinese, Laluo) Township, Sagya County of Shigatse City, on the right bank of the Yarlung Tsangpo. This is not a hydropower plant but an irrigation project.

The other possibility is the Kangcho Reservoir Project, located in Kangcho (Chinese, Kangzhuo) Township, Gyantse County, 20 kilometres away from Shigatse City. It is one of the important projects in the water conservancy included in the 14th Five-Year Plan for water security. The main objective of the Kangcho Reservoir is to provide irrigation to an area of about 46,500 acres.

Conclusion

The vague announcement by Beijing of the impending construction of a dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo does not tally with President Xi Jinping’s New Year message, which proclaimed a message of international cooperation and friendship; a unilateral decision to go ahead with the HPP project goes in the opposite direction. However, preparatory had begun soon after the National People’s Congress (NPC) said in 2021 that “the building of hydropower bases on the lower reaches of the river is among the priority energy projects”. First, the Pai-Metok (Pai-Mo) Highway linking Nyingchi to Metok, north of Upper Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh was opened in July 2021. After the completion of the highway, the length of the road from Nyingchi City to Metok County was shortened from 346 kilometres to 180 kilometres, and the driving time shortened from 11 hours to 4.5 hours. In strategic terms, a 67-kilometre-long highway (and a tunnel under the Doshung-la mountain) will be a game changer and considerably aid the construction of the planned HPPs.

A dam in the U-bend will have incalculable strategic and environmental implications for India; the HPPs, being located just north of the McMahon Line, would indeed threaten India’s entire Northeast and Bangladesh, too. India needs to seriously engage China, diplomatically and otherwise, with factual data and scientific arguments; it will of course be more difficult to take Bangladesh on board in the present political circumstances.

This is a modified version of the article originally published as Claude Arpi. 2025. ‘Beijing’s mega-dam on Tsangpo River threatens Tibet as much as India and Bangladesh’. Firstpost. 25 January 2025.