A proposed dam on the Tibetan plateau shouldn’t unleash panic in India

India’s approach to the dam proposal cannot be panicky, it requires policymakers to make downstream preparations. (Representational image)

China’s recently approved a proposal to build a 60-giga-watt dam at the ‘Great Bend’ of the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet has sent shockwaves in India. The highly reactive and securitised nature of Indian policy discourse on China has contributed to the threat perception that the dam shall disrupt India’s access to Brahmaputra waters as a lower riparian vis-à-vis China, or even divert the flow of the river away from the lower reaches of Tibet, to the Chinese province of Xinjiang. However, it may just be the case that this is not so much a national security threat, as it is a potential opportunity for India to build its own hydropower capabilities without worrying about China’s capabilities as an upper riparian.

A dam still on paper

Approved by the Chinese government on December 25, 2024, but only announced to the world in an article appearing in the state-run news media platform Xinhua, the new Great Bend dam is proposed to be the largest in the world. It has the potential to produce three times the energy generation capacity of the second largest dam in the world, the Three Gorges, which is also built in China.

Despite the promise of a massive investment of 1 trillion yuan (~US$ 137 billion), the founding brick for the dam is yet to be laid. And not only has such a dam been under deliberation in China for at least a decade, but the first official confirmation that a hydro-project was in the works at the Great Bend only came with the approval of China’s 14th Five-Year Plan in 2021. Even in the Plan, the proposal makes no mention of a dam on the Great Bend, but a need to create investment opportunities in “hydropower development in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River.”

So why has China specified the details of the dam now? 

There could be many reasons. For starters, 2025 is the last year for the budgetary allocations of the 14th Five-Year Plan to go through. If hydrological development in the lower reaches of Yarlung Tsangpo was to manifest itself in the form of a dam on the Great Bend, it would have to be announced as soon as possible.

Secondly, it is worth noting that China’s peak carbon emissions target is just around the corner – before it can achieve Carbon neutrality by 2060, its emissions must peak by 2030. At the same time, China’s current power generation/ energy mix is still heavily dominated by coal, reaching a record high of 60 percent in 2023, before eventually dropping slightly to about 53 percent in May 2024. The rest constitutes renewable sources of energy, such as hydropower (15 percent), solar (12 percent), and wind (11 percent).

In this context, post the 2022 and 2023 droughts, hydropower saw an increase in utilisation in 2024. But a complex range of factors has made it difficult for China’s full hydropower potential to be realised. Even though China already has one of the world’s largest installed hydropower capacities, its utilisation in electricity consumption is less than half. This means that there is an overcapacity in the renewable energy production sector, which, in the past, has also led the Chinese government to block solar projects in the western provinces of Gansu, Tibet, and Xinjiang. Hence, the unprofitability of investing in hydropower in China, combined with the continuing dependence on coal and the environmental costs of running a dam project, together make it difficult to survive in China’s hydro business.

As per the 14th Five-Year Plan, the main reason behind the announcement of hydro-projects in southern Tibet was to increase investment in hydropower amidst falling domestic demand and private investment levels. And so, it could be that the approval for a dam on the Great Bend is also a solution providing hydro-businesses a chance to boost overall investment sentiment in the country. This is especially given that in the past few years, big firms like PowerChina have made bids to the party-state to build a dam on the lower reaches of Yarlung Tsangpo. After its proposals were taken under consideration in 2020 and subsequently included in the 14th Plan, it today emerges as a big winner from the approved project.

What’s the India angle?

Now that a dam so close to the border with China has been approved by Beijing, Indian policymakers, especially in states such as Arunachal Pradesh, have taken the position that this is a national security concern. This concern especially relates to the potential impact of such a dam on the volume of water and flow of the river in lower riparian countries (in this case, India and Bangladesh).

However, the fact of the matter remains that rainfall in India contributes heavily to the volume and flow of the Brahmaputra after it enters the country, and till such a time as it is the ‘Yarlung Tsangpo’, China’s contribution to its volume is somewhere between 7 percent and 30 percent. And even if the massive dam on the Great Bend was leveraged as a tap, leading to either flash floods or droughts downstream, embankment preparations and dams already in place, along with the experience of tackling flash flooding in what is already a heavy rainfall area, would protect India’s interests.

At the same time, for China to undertake drastic manoeuvres with a dam of this scale would not only invite international backlash, but would also, first and foremost, degrade Tibet’s ecology, displacing thousands. This is not to say that the dam may not create a security challenge for India, but to make the case that assuming the worst may not help mitigate the threat posed.

What Next?

It is important to note that new treaty solutions to the issue, along the lines of the Indus Water Treaty with Pakistan, will likely hit major snags. This is given that China has, in the past, demonstrated its ability to undermine the information-sharing MOU on the Brahmaputra, as well as other agreements and understandings on the border issue. Hence, India’s approach to the dam proposal cannot be panicky; instead, it requires policymakers to make downstream preparations. At the same time, there is a need to continue direct diplomatic negotiations with China on the revival of the Brahmaputra information-sharing MoU, which has expired since 2023. New Delhi’s current official stance, which involves communicating concerns regarding the potential misuse of such a dam to Beijing, must also be a continued endeavour. As the world transitions to renewable sources of energy, India must not shy away from the creation of such electricity in the region. However, both its diplomatic and internal approach should focus on utilisation of power generated, as opposed to the reckless installation of new projects to express strength.