After years of friction, the India-China relationship is finally showing signs of normalizing. However, just as trust was slowly building up between two of the world’s most populous countries, a new threat looms large over India.
A threat that, if not appropriately managed, could be far more dangerous than any border war with China.
Even as Indian and Chinese troops disengaged over the contentious Himalayan border after years of an eyeball-to-eyeball situation, the two nuclear powers might be drifting towards a new kind of war – a ‘water war’ in the ecologically sensitive Himalayas that could trigger periods of severe drought and colossal floods, affecting the lives of millions of Indians.
Though scientists and climate activists are still debating the long-term effects of the controversial Three Gorges Dam, currently the world’s largest dam, which scientists claim has slowed the Earth’s rotation by 0.06 microseconds, Beijing has started building a new dam in the Himalayas just miles away from its border with India’s Arunachal Pardesh that will be three times bigger than the Three Gorges Dam.
The dam is already being called a ticking ‘water bomb’ in India.
The Great Bend Dam
China revealed last year that it plans to build a US$168 billion hydropower dam in the autonomous region of Tibet.
Dubbed the Great Bend Dam, the 60,000 MW dam will have a power capacity three times that of the massive Three Gorges Dam, currently the world’s largest dam.
The project is planned for construction on the Yarlung Tsangpo River, which flows into India from Arunachal Pradesh and is known as the Brahmaputra.
It is expected to generate more electricity than any other dam in the world and will help Beijing meet its clean energy targets amid rising power needs.
President Xi Jinping called for the project to be “advanced forcefully, systematically, and effectively” during a rare visit to Tibet earlier this year.
However, open-source images, videos, and reports reviewed by CNN suggest that China has already begun construction of the massive dam.
“Now, satellite images, publicly available corporate documents, and social media posts from the area reviewed by CNN show work is underway building and widening roads, constructing bridges, erecting storage facilities for explosives, expanding cell service, and relocating villagers – all apparent efforts to make way for construction, which officially began in July.”
The dam will be built across the Yarlung Tsangpo River, near the border with India’s Arunachal Pradesh, where the river drops by more than 2,000 meters in elevation over roughly 50 kilometers.
That steep descent has the potential to generate over 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually – roughly triple the output of China’s Three Gorges Dam.
“Clues about the project’s design, both referenced in official or scientific reports and from open-source information… suggest a complex system that could include dams and reservoirs along the Yarlung Tsangpo river, as well as a series of underground hydropower stations connected by tunnels, harnessing energy as a diverted portion of the river makes a steep elevation decline.”
China insists that the dam’s design was finalized after decades of scientific studies and surveys, and that it will not only help fight climate change, but also reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions by reducing dependence on coal-fired power plants.
Additionally, China claims that the dam will help manage excess monsoon water flow and mitigate flood risks in downstream countries like India and Bangladesh, thus saving thousands of lives and protecting property worth billions of dollars.
However, the dam’s location (just miles away from the India-China border) and its expansive scope (three times the size of the world’s largest Three Gorges Dam) have raised concerns in India.
Indian Concerns Over China Dam
Notwithstanding China’s benign claims about the dam, there are legitimate concerns in India.
China can weaponize the water. The dam can store so much water that it could trigger severe droughts and colossal floods in India, affecting the lives of millions of people.
A significant drop in water levels in the Brahmaputra River could affect farming and fishing in India, affecting the livelihoods of millions of Indians.
Earlier this year, in an interview with Press Trust of India (PTI), Arunachal Pradesh’s Chief Minister Pema Khandu termed the dam a ticking “water bomb,” an existential threat, and a bigger issue than anything else apart from the military threat.
“The issue is that China cannot be trusted. No one knows what they might do,” said Khandu.
“If the dam is completed, our Siang and Brahmaputra rivers could dry up considerably,” he added.
“Suppose the dam is built and they suddenly release water, our entire Siang belt would be destroyed. In particular, the Adi tribe and similar groups… would see all their property, land, and especially human life, suffer devastating effects,” he explained.
Earlier, a spokesperson for India’s Ministry of External Affairs said that Beijing has been urged “to ensure that the interests of downstream states of the Brahmaputra are not harmed by activities in the upstream area.”
“We will continue to monitor and take necessary measures to protect our interests,” Randhir Jaiswal, spokesperson for India’s Ministry of External Affairs, said in a statement.
According to a report by the Institute for Security & Development Policy – ‘Mapping China’s Himalayan Hustle‘ – “Thanks to a vast network of river dams, China is now able to manipulate the water level on transboundary rivers: On one hand, it can release tons of water, causing floods beyond its borders; on the other, water storage and diversion may
potentially result in drying up some territories downstream.”
The threat is even more acute, as China is not a signatory to international water-sharing treaties. This limits India’s ability to legally restrain Beijing from altering the flow of the transboundary river.
Furthermore, Beijing voted against the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses of 1997. Based on the principles of mutual
benefit, the treaty aimed to establish norms for cooperation and management schemes over transboundary rivers among riparian countries.
International think tanks have also shared India’s concerns over China’s dams.
A 2020 report by the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank, warned that Chinese control over rivers originating in Tibet could give it a powerful hold over India’s economy and agriculture.
Additionally, China’s past behavior justifies India’s concern.
China’s Murky History Of Using Water As A Weapon
China’s maneuvers on its transboundary river dams have been highly controversial and have raised suspicions about Beijing’s real intentions.
For instance, in 2021, China cut the water flow on the Mekong River by 50 percent without
prior warning. According to Beijing’s official explanations, it was necessary for a three-week
power-line maintenance project.
However, it resulted in a significant drop in water levels, affecting the lives of millions of people along waterways in Southeast Asian countries of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Similarly, the lack of warning from Beijing about the upcoming flood in September 2017—despite the existing agreement on water data-sharing—as well as the contamination of the Siang River in the Indian state of Assam in December 2017 raised New Delhi’s suspicions about China’s upstream activities.
Some experts have linked these incidents with the Doklam standoff between India and China in 2017.
Another major concern is that the dam will be built in a seismically active and ecologically fragile area.
Notably, just two weeks after China announced the project in December 2024, the Tibetan region suffered a massive 6.8 magnitude earthquake that killed 126 people in the thinly populated area and left 180 injured.
In fact, the area has a history of devastating earthquakes.
In 1950, Tibet suffered one of its worst earthquakes, measuring 8.6 on the Richter scale.
A dam of this scale in an earthquake-prone region is highly risky.
“It’s just staggering that (Chinese officials) would commit to building this that far out in such a challenging geopolitical and geotechnical environment,” said Darrin Magee, a scholar of Chinese hydropower at Western Washington University in the US.
“The project raises concerns about the risks of flooding and structural collapse, particularly in the event of an earthquake. The project is located in the vicinity of the world’s deepest gorge, which poses unique geological and engineering challenges,” said Neeraj Singh Manhas, special advisor for South Asia at South Korea-based think tank Parley Policy Initiative.
Manhas said the region is highly seismically active due to the tectonic interaction between the Indian and Eurasian plates in the Earth’s crust.
“A large-scale hydroelectric project in such an area must contend with the potential for earthquakes, landslides, and glacial lake outburst floods, which can all compromise dam integrity,” he said.
“This is possibly the world’s riskiest project, and a serious engineering challenge to build and maintain,” Himangshu Thakkar, coordinator for South Asia Network of Dams, Rivers and People, a Delhi-based research group, told ENR (Engineering News-Record).
Against this backdrop, India is justified in having concerns and demanding more transparency and information sharing from Beijing.
- Sumit Ahlawat has over a decade of experience in news media. He has worked with Press Trust of India, Times Now, Zee News, Economic Times, and Microsoft News. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Media and Modern History from the University of Sheffield, UK.
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