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WATER POLITICS

An interesting article from The Wall Street Journal, detailing China’s ambition to become the ‘dam builder for the world’ by exporting its hydropower know-how to developing countries.  While it discusses the economic benefits and environmental impact such projects offer, the report also notes that there is a growing backlash against China’s growing dominance in Southeast Asian and African business and trade amid fears that China is using its political power to convince developing countries to accept projects and investment.  As the article notes:

“…Chinese companies and banks are now involved in billions of dollars worth of deals to construct at least 47 major dams in 27 countries, including Sudan and Myanmar, nations criticized for human-rights abuses and poor environmental track records. [And] just this week, Gezhouba Co., one of China’s biggest engineering firms, said it won a $1.5 billion contract to build a hydroelectric dam in Pakistan. Earlier this year, the company announced it would build a $1.5 billion dam in Nigeria. China’s leading dam builder, Sinohydro Corp. Ltd. last month won a bid to build a dam in Laos whose cost is estimated at $2 billion.

…China is equally active in neighboring Southeast Asia, where some 21 Chinese companies are involved in 52 hydropower projects, according to research issued this year at the China-ASEAN Power Cooperation & Development Forum.

Environmentalists say dams have already damaged the Mekong River’s headwaters within China’s borders. They want to stop China building any more downstream. Activists are targeting China’s building of dams in Myanmar, which they say is hurting local communities through forced relocations while supporting an authoritarian regime. In Laos, one of the poorest countries in the world, Sinohydro, which built the Three Gorges Dam, is constructing two dams to export electricity to neighboring China and Thailand.

A broader backlash against China’s growing dominance in Southeast Asian and African business and trade has grown along with opposition to its dam-building spree. “China is using its political power to convince lower Mekong countries to accept projects and investment,” says Premrudee Daoroung, a Thai activist with Towards Ecological Recovery & Regional Alliance, which is campaigning against dams along the Mekong River. “In many cases the local people are starting to talk against the Chinese.”