Tsering Dhundup
DHARAMSHALA, Dec, 27: China has approved the world’s largest hydropower project on the Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua. The project is designed to generate electricity output three times that of the Three Gorges Dam in central China, which is currently the largest hydropower facility globally.
Chinese officials claim that hydropower projects in Tibet, which reportedly account for more than a third of China’s hydroelectric potential, will not impact the environment or downstream water supplies. However, experts and observers have raised concerns. Indian defence analyst Brahma Chellaney cited the seismic risks of the region, referencing the 2008 Kardze earthquake, which resulted in over 80,000 deaths and was linked to a nearby reservoir.
The cost of the project is estimated at over 1 trillion yuan (US$137 billion), significantly higher than the 254.2 billion yuan spent on the Three Gorges Dam. The latter project involved the displacement of 1.4 million people and cost over four times its initial estimate. Chinese authorities have not disclosed how many Tibetans may be displaced by the new project or detailed its ecological implications for the region.
The Yarlung Tsangpo river, which flows across the Tibetan Plateau, descends sharply before reaching India, where it is known as the Brahmaputra river. The proposed project will be located in a high-rainfall area and is expected to produce 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, compared to the 88.2 billion kilowatt-hours generated by the Three Gorges Dam.
In 2020, Yan Zhiyong, then-chairman of the Power Construction Corporation of China, identified the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo as a prime site for hydropower development. He highlighted the river’s vertical drop of 2,000 meters over 50 kilometres as a major resource.
Dam projects in Tibet by the CCP have always faced resistance from the Tibetans. Earlier this year, protests against the Kamtok Dam project in Dege County in February led to hundreds of detentions and reports of injuries. A group of 13 UN human rights experts raised concerns about the Kamtok dam on the Drichu River, emphasising risks to cultural and religious sites.
Maya Wang, acting China director at Human Rights Watch stated, “The Chinese authorities have long been hostile to public protests, but their response is especially brutal when the protests are by Tibetans and other ethnic groups, Other governments should press Beijing to free these protesters, who have been wrongfully detained for exercising their basic rights.”
China’s previous construction of large dams on the Mekong River has been linked to droughts and other ecological issues downstream. The focus on the Brahmaputra Basin has raised fears of similar consequences, with potential impacts on both downstream nations and Tibet’s biodiversity.
As the dam at the upper reaches of the Mekong River reveals, China is effectively stealing water from countries that are downstream from their dams. Drought in the Mekong means rice can’t be planted, nor vegetables and people are no longer able to feed themselves from their garden plots. Thus, the stolen water causes starvation. This is the directly evidenced by scientists.
Tibet’s origins as an empire and modern nation began along the Yarlung Tsangpo river, while their kings were of the Yarlung Dynasty. Yumbulakhang, the first castle, sits south of Lhasa along the banks of the Yarlung. The early cemeteries for the kings are nearby. Can we be sure that China is not planning to submerge Tibet’s history with water, similar to the other methods they’ve been using since 1951 to promote their “historical fraud”? (Le Monde, Op-Ed, Group letter (20 scholars of Asia), 03 September 2024; the scholar’s applied criticism is ” historical fraud” for China’s term ‘Xizang’)
The Chinese communist Party is known for making bombastic announcements to boost its image! It thrives on propaganda projection of its greatness! It does things which is often total madness. The cultural revolution which created utter chaos in China and occupied Tibet and killed millions is one of the most shameful project of the criminal regime! Then it conducted the “anti-rightest” movement which persecuted millions and killed millions of intellectuals, academics and man of letters! Then came the “great leap forward” which was responsible for the starvation of 35 million people in China and occupied territories like Tibet! This was followed by the one child policy where, tens of thousands of women including Tibetans were forcibly sterilised and those who happened to reproduce two children were punished by taking the child away from the parents by force to be given for “adoption” to westerners. The CCP aborted eight million pregnancies against the will of the parents! Corrupt police officials kidnapped newly born children and sold them in the adoption market to line up their pockets! As a result of such drastic and cruel policy, communist China’s population has dwindled to such an extent that objective estimate of China’s population today is said to be only eight hundred million and not 1.3billion as it boasts! India has taken over communist China now. Today, the CCP is realising it’s Herculean mistake and it has now made it a crime not to have children! It has even a menstruation Ministry to monitor prospective mothers! The liquidation of the Evergrande Group was another disaster that saddled the CCP’s endless policy failures! There are 20 million units in China which remain incomplete that has ruined the lives of millions of Chinese netizens because they paid the money in advance as is required but the property developer went bankrupt. So, millions of netizens have lost everything! They are not allowed to live in the unfinished units and they can’t afford to pay rent! There are ghost towns in China where incomplete houses are looking like a grave yard of a lost civilisation! We saw, how the CCP oppressed the population during the Wuhan virus by locking them for three long years which brought immense misery to the people and destroyed the economy! Owing to this mismanagement, thousands of Chinese are fleeing to America through Ecuador and Mexico to the US. In 2024 alone 12,000 Chinese arrived in the US from communist China! The Chinese people have lost confidence in the CCP! This is the assessment of a African student studying in China! The CCP is now embarking upon another disaster of building a mammoth dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo, three times bigger than the three gorges dam on the Yangtze River! The multiple dams the CCP built have brought untold disasters and death in China! When the dams overflowed, the Chinese authorities released water without warning the public and thousands of homes were flooded and hundreds of people killed by the floods! Even buses were being carried away by the roaring torrent of the water released from the dams! Beijing itself was in danger of being flooded! Now, the CCP wants to bring misery to the Tibetan people! The pristine Tibetan landscape around the Yarlung Tsangpo and the green barley fields which is the livelihood of the Tibetans and the cradle of Tibetan civilisation is now the target of the criminal CCP cult! This is where human habitation first begin in Tibet and the Tibetan Empire Yarlung Dynasty was first established in the Yarlung Tsangpo region. It is now threatened by the reckless misadventure of the CCP. It’s going to cause immense pain to millions of Tibetans living in their ancestral home to be displaced and discarded like strangers in their own country! It’s going to greatly impact the vegetation for the animals living in the area that would be submerged which will result in the extinction of hundreds of bird species and other wild animals owing to scarcity of food and habitat. The Chinese work in the building industry have been shoddy. We saw how 40,000 children were killed when their shoddy school buildings collapsed on them during the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 while official Chinese residents withstood the earthquake! There was strong speculation that the Three gorge walls were cracking and that there was imminent danger of them giving way which would devastate the land and kill millions! Now, the CCP is bringing the same catastrophic danger to the Tibetan people to cause immense misery to the lives and livelihood of the Tibetan people and also reduce the flow of water to riparian countries of India and Bangladesh and other others. If the dam overflows the Chinese will release water in order to avert danger to the whole dam and that means, it will have devastating flood and landslide in India and Bangladesh. It has already happened before in Arunachal even though the CCP never admitted it! India, Bangladesh and all the countries that are riparians of the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) must lodge stern protest to the CCP to stop forthwith such reckless environmental degradation and human induced suffering to the people of Tibet, India and Bangladesh by incompetent and gangster cultured Chinese communist regime. The regime is a cult and it does not respect human rights and international law! OCCUPIED TIBET HAS BECOME THE CRIMINAL CCP’S PLAYGROUND TO FURTHER ITS IMPERIALIST AMBITION OF ASIAN HEGEMONY AND WORLD CONQUEST. The CCP makes promises and pledges which are as flimsy as the declaration of love by a prostitute! In order to fulfil the sheer arrogance of the CCP cult, Tibetans are made to pay the price! The international community must intervene in the theft of Tibet and its rich resources by the occupying Chinese communist regime! China is illegally occupying Tibet and it has no right to exploit the riches of Tibet without any benefit to the Tibetan people who are the true custodians of Tibet!