BLOG
June 18th, 2011
Via The Times of India, a report on the lingering doubt held by India over China’s intentions regarding the Brahmaputra River. As the article notes:
China’s reaction to the alarm in India over diversion of Brahmaputra waters has failed to convince Indian experts even as the government tries hard to downplay the threat. China said on Tuesday that it will take into “full consideration” the interest of lower riparian countries while implementing any project but once again refrained from denying directly that it was planning to divert the flow of Brahmaputra.
“The Chinese foreign ministry’s statement (that China’s policy is to ‘take full consideration of the interests of the downstream states’) is what Beijing has repeated ad nauseam while quietly building more dams to siphon off the waters of the Mekong, Irtysh and Illy rivers,” strategic affairs expert Brahma Chellaney said, adding that China had again not denied diverting Brahmaputra through mega dams.
What is making matters worse for India is that China rejects the very notion of any water-sharing arrangement or treaty, like Indus Water Treaty between India and Pakistan, with any riparian neighbour. “The terms — water sharing, shared water resources, treaty and common norms and rules — are anathema to it. China is one of the only three countries that voted against the 1997 United Nations Convention on the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses. This international convention lays down norms and rules which China rejects,” Chellaney said.
Chinese experts, led by Chinese Academy of Sciences academician Wang Guangqian, have come up with a proposal to divert water from the upper reaches towards Xinjiang. The proposal seems to have originated in 2001 but could not be acted upon apparently because of the heavy costs involved. According to a report by the Beijing based China Dialogue, Wang Guangqian’s team is understood to be working with government’s South-North Water Transfer office to organise a feasibility study for their proposal.
While India has water sharing treaties with upstream neighbours like Nepal and Bhutan, there is no such treaty with China which, as the dominant riparian power in the region, refuses to enter into formal water sharing deals with any of its neighbours. India also has water sharing treaties with its downstream neighbours like Bangladesh and Pakistan. Nearly all important international rivers in China originate in ethnic-minority homelands which, as Chellaney said, were forcibly seized after the Chinese Communists came to power in 1949.