On this episode of China Uncensored,
Southeast Asian nations are pretty upset
about all China’s dam projects.
Hi, welcome back to China Uncensored.
I’m your host, Chris Chappell.
And boy have I got a good dam story for you.
Because we’re going to talk about
one of China’s megaprojects:
reshaping the entire geopolitical-
environmental-economic landscape
of a large chuck of Southeast Asia.
Using a bunch of dams.
Plus strong-arm politics.
This is the Mekong River.
It’s called the Lancang River in China.
It starts in Tibet,
and flows down through Myanmar,
Laos, Thailand, Cambodia,
and finally Vietnam,
where it empties out
into the South China Sea.
Which means both ends of the river
have been Chinese territory
since ancient times.
That last part is a joke.
Except...kind of not.
The Chinese Communist Party feels that
it has the strongest right to control the river.
Partly because China is the most upstream country,
which gives it the terrain advantage.
And partly because China
is bigger and stronger
than those other five little countries combined.
It could beat ’em up with
one river tied behind its back.
China has already built 7 hydropower dams
like this one along the upper Mekong River.
It has plans to build 21 more.
People living downstream are concerned,
because dams upstream mess up
the entire river’s natural cycles.
And that affects the whole ecosystem.
The Mekong River is a huge economic resource
for the region.
It’s home to one of the world’s
most diverse fisheries,
second only to Brazil’s Amazon River.
Over 60 million people
in the lower Mekong River basin
rely on the river for food,
water, and transportation.
And China’s dams are causing
some serious dam problems.
For example,
in the summer of 2016,
Southeast Asia faced the worst drought
in a hundred years.
It had the biggest impact in Vietnam,
where it directly affected
half a million households,
causing rather serious problems,
like “a lack of drinking water,
food shortages,
and forced internal migration
to urban areas.”
Is this because of China’s dams upstream?
Well, if you ask Chinese state-run media,
the droughts were actually caused by
the climate cycle known as El Niño.
Which in English translates as “The Niño.”
In other words, The Niño did it,
and it was totally not China’s fault.
In fact, we should thank China.
Because after desperate requests from Vietnam,
China released a little bit of water
to alleviate that drought—
which, again, was definitely “due to
the prolonged effects of El Niño.”
But if you ask, say, any scientist—
they would tell you that Chinese dams
are at least partly to blame.
“When China began damming the Mekong
and its upstream tributaries in the early 1990s,
scientists predicted the kinds of droughts
we’re seeing today.”
Scientists predicted it,
the CCP ignored the data,
and went ahead with its dam projects anyway.
This kind of intentionally ignoring science
doesn’t exactly bode well for the regime
that claims it wants to be a world leader
in tackling climate change.
But anyway,
even before China started building dams,
there was a need to collectively manage
issues related to the Mekong River,
since it’s shared by so many countries.
They’ve come together in various forums
over the past 60 years.
And in 1995,
four of them established
the Mekong River Commission.
The Mekong River Commission
has been helpful,
though not ideal.
Partly because China
refused to participate.
Hey, I totally understand.
These meetings do not look exciting.
Worst way to spend an afternoon ever!
Except maybe that time I watched Battlefield Earth.
But “boring meetings” is not
the reason China opted out.
It’s actually because The Chinese regime
didn’t like the rules,
and preferred to set up its own
Mekong River group
with its own rules.
In November 2015,
China set up the awkwardly-titled
Lancang-Mekong Cooperation framework—
which sounds even more boring.
But it’s actually about power.
It allows Beijing to sidestep
the Mekong River Commission’s regulation
that dam proposals need to be discussed
by all the member nations
before they can be built.
Basically, the Chinese regime wanted to make sure
the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation framework
didn’t require actual cooperation.
At least not between all the nations.
See, even though all six nations are members,
China emphasises “bilateral comprehensive
strategic partnerships.”
That is, one-on-one partnerships,
where China is one of the ones.
It’s a classic CCP “divide and conquer” strategy.
“China has dealt with Mekong countries
bilaterally so that these countries
are not able to unite and stand up to China
as a regional grouping.”
As another expert puts it,
“If Beijing manages to achieve control
of the Mekong’s development
it would quickly become a crucial artery
for China’s rise and exportation of influence.”
This is not surprising.
Remember Xi Jinping’s three and an half hour speech
that cured insomnia at
the 19th Party Congress last October?
How he rambled on about how China
should have more international influence?
Well, in just the past two years,
China has set aside billions of dollars
to support 45 Mekong River projects
in these countries.
For example,
China is helping fund a series
of at least three dams in Laos.
The first one “directly ignored the recommendations
of the Strategic Environmental Assessment”
but Laos went ahead with it anyway.
Because now that Laos has
financial support from China,
it can now flat out ignore the concerns
from Cambodia and Vietnam.
But if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
Because Cambodia is building its own dams.
Which, unfortunately,
come with their own dam problems.
They’re also paid for with Chinese money.
So the Chinese regime has built
its own Southeast Asia cooperation group,
and it then works with each member country
one by one,
and promises each of them economic development.
Individually, each project is fairly limited.
But combined, they have a major impact
on an entire ecosystem—
which includes a tiny part of China,
and huge parts of Myanmar,
Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
But don’t worry,
nothing could possibly go wrong.
What?
That was a different dam
that burst in Laos.
Don’t worry about it.
So what do you think?
Leave your comments below.
Once again, I’m Chris Chappell.
See you next time.
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