Was China’s mega dam announcement a trial balloon?

On December 25, 2024, China’s Xinhua News Agency reported Beijing’s approval for the construction of a hydropower project in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet. This is the river whose lower course is known as the Siang in Arunachal Pradesh and, after a confluence with two other major tributaries, as the Brahmaputra in Assam.

Since then, Indian and global media have produced hundreds of experts elaborating on the issue of a “dam”, though the Chinese report did not specify what type of hydropower plant (or plants) will be built or when construction will start.

It has generally been assumed that this will be a single dam, the largest in the world, which could produce three times more energy than the 22,500-mega watt Three Gorges Dam.

A study of the Chinese media over the years however indicates that the construction of a single mega dam was abandoned well before this announcement in favour of a more elaborate project: a series of smaller hydropower projects from Deyang, a remote location near Pai town in Nyingchi City, Southern Tibet, to an area close to the Indian border in Arunachal Pradesh.

For the mega project to materialise, many factors are involved.

First and foremost, it has to be a political decision, taking...

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