China's Hydro-Hegemony: How Beijing Uses Dams as Geopolitical Leverage

China's hydro-hegemony: How Beijing plays water games

New Delhi, July 6

China's "water games" across South Asia include capitalising on mega-dams in Medog on the Tibetan Plateau, such as the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze, and pushing the Teesta River management project in Bangladesh to turn hydropower into geopolitical leverage.

Incidentally, China now has 24,217 large dams; the US follows with 10,053, while India has 4,489, according to the International Commission on Large Dams. When Beijing broke ground on the Medog Hydropower Project in 2025, the world took notice.

Estimated to cost about USD 170 billion, it has a capacity about three times that of the Three Gorges. The overall aim, as seen, is to turn these into a geopolitical instrument.

"Initial analysis of satellite data focused on the deep U-bend of the (Yarlung Tsangpo) river, approximately 25-30 km from the India-China border, where recent infrastructure developments, including roads, settlements and other facilities, indicated significant activity," observed participants at a China Expert Group Meeting organised by the Vivekananda International Foundation last September.

"Reports indicate that the project will require four to six tunnels of 20-60 km each to divert water around a sharp bend in the river, entailing extensive tunnelling through a highly sensitive and geologically fragile area," added the distinguished panel.

The Yarlung Tsangpo becomes the Brahmaputra in India and the Jamuna in Bangladesh, so any major upstream intervention raises downstream anxieties about its flow, aquatic life, sedimentation, and flooding. A January 2025 analysis from the Institute of South Asian Studies warned that Medog could have severe ecological consequences in Tibet, arguing that the project would worsen pressure on a fragile plateau environment.

"Perhaps the most striking feature of the Medog project is not its scale, its cost, or its geopolitical implications, but the near-total silence surrounding it inside China," noted an April report in CCE News, a global digital magazine covering construction, engineering, and infrastructure trends.

Other reports emphasise the region's steep terrain and seismic risk, which make engineering difficult and increase concern about landslides, reservoir instability, and disaster scenarios.

The Three Gorges Dam, built across the Yangtze River in Hubei province, is now the world's largest hydroelectric power station with an installed capacity of 22,500 MW. Built between 1994 and 2012, it was designed to provide flood control, improve navigation, and generate a huge quantity of electricity for China.

It has been among the world's most controversial infrastructure projects, displacing over a million people and flooding important sites. The CCE report noted that when the Three Gorges was built, it generated fierce domestic debate, with engineers, environmentalists, historians, and journalists publicly arguing about the displacement of 1.4 million people, the flooding of archaeological sites, and the ecological consequences for the Yangtze. It added that the debate was eventually suppressed, but it happened, while Medog has generated almost none.

Reports have highlighted environmental concerns, including sedimentation, biodiversity loss, and increased risks of landslides and seismic activity, associated with the massive reservoir. A 2020 CNN report quoted a study by the China Earthquake Administration, which found that in the six years after the reservoir was filled in June 2003, 3,429 earthquakes were recorded along the reservoir, compared with only 94 from January 2000 to May 2003.

Meanwhile, China's proposed Teesta River Comprehensive Management and Restoration Project in Bangladesh is a major water initiative that has drawn regional attention. The Teesta River, flowing through Sikkim and West Bengal in India, enters Bangladesh through the Rangpur Division. For Dhaka, the Beijing-backed project fills a critical gap left by unpredictable flows that have long plagued its farmers.

India and Bangladesh negotiated a water-sharing deal in 2011, but the then-opposition in West Bengal stalled its implementation. By turning to China, Dhaka hopes to secure reliable water management infrastructure.

New Delhi is wary that Beijing's involvement in the Teesta basin could give the Dragon a foothold in sensitive border regions, complicating India's own water diplomacy with Bangladesh. There are also apprehensions that Chinese engineering and financing could translate into political leverage, much as Beijing's Belt and Road projects have in other countries.

Viewed together, such projects reflect a consistent Chinese approach of using big water projects to overflow domestic goals into external influence, bargaining power, and basin-scale control.

— IANS