China is damming up rivers in Tibet.
They’re stealing India’s water.
And it could lead to armed conflict.
Welcome to China Uncensored. I’m Chris Chappell.
This episode has been sponsored by Surfshark.
You should be using a VPN like Surfshark to protect your identity whenever you go online.
Disputes between India and China have been getting
worse this year. Especially since that deadly border clash in June.
But while things seem to have calmed down for now, there’s a lot at stake here. But here’s
something you maybe haven’t thought about—water. This border dispute is also about protecting
India’s, and many other countries’, water supply from Chinese Communist control.
It has to do mainly with these two rivers, which begin in Tibet.
One flows from Tibet through northwestern India into Pakistan,
and the other flows from Tibet through northeastern India into Bangladesh.
These are major rivers. Millions of people depend on them.
But the Chinese Communist Party would prefer that millions of people
depend on the Communist Party. And it’s becoming a big dam problem.
China has plans to build and finance
up to five new dams along the Indus River in the part of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan.
You see, Pakistan and India don’t have enough
conflict in Kashmir already, so China is just trying to help out.
The problem with adding new dams is that it could mess up agriculture downstream. That includes
sending less water to farmland, and reducing the amount of silt, which also supports farming.
And those problems could mean that huge numbers of Indian farmers have to relocate.
The Indian government is very unhappy about this new dam in Kashmir.
But surprise! Pakistan and China don’t care.
In July this year, a Chinese state-owned company began construction.
It’s the first major Chinese infrastructure project in Kashmir. It’s part of the
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which China is tying into its global Belt and Road Initiative. So
there’s a lot of money and political power behind it—way more money and political power than the
Indian farmers downstream have. So, the project moves forward, environmental concerns be dammed!
And that’s just the Indus River. There’s also the Brahmaputra River.
It flows from Tibet through India and down to Bangladesh.
“Over a period of 10 years, China has managed to construct
three dams on the Brahmaputra river in parts of Tibet close to the Indian border.”
The largest one became fully operational in 2015.
Initially, the Chinese government denied its existence. But when satellite photos came out, and
they were caught in a lie, they were like, don’t worry, it won’t affect the water flow downstream.
Yes, dams never affect water flow.
China now plans to build eight more of these kinds of dams.
There’s another motivation for building them, though, besides generating power.
In the kind of mega project fit only for the most self-aggrandizing dictatorships, the Communist
Party wants to divert water from these rivers to Xinjiang, home to all the happy ethnic Ughyurs.
They plan to do that with a 600 mile long
tunnel. Chinese authorities hope it will “turn Xinjiang into California.”
California? Maybe they need a better analogy.
One expert from China’s Dalian University of Technology said “The
project is ‘anticipated to solve the problem of water, food, and drought in the country.’”
Yes. Massive projects that radically alter the environment
will definitely solve the problem of water, food, and drought.
But Northwestern China is facing a water shortage crisis.
It’s a manmade crisis of course. It stems mainly from cramming too many people and
too much farmland in a region that’s not naturally able to support it all.
But I don’t think the Chinese Communist Party would mind if they solve that crisis
inside China, by causing an environmental catastrophe for people in other countries.
And according to an India analyst at the Hudson Institute,
this will ultimately mean more Chinese troops on the border with India.
“This nightmare scenario has already started. Because China needs more water to develop,
China has started plans to divert the flow of the river. The more China develops Tibet,
the more Chinese troops will get deployed to secure these water resources.
As a result, China’s military activities in the India-China border (around Tibet) will increase.”
Because in the end, it always seems to come down to territorial conflicts.
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Once again, I’m Chris Chappell. See you next time.