China’s New Super-Dam To Adversely Impact Bangladesh And India

The Chinese Communist Party's penchant for secrecy continued in 2024, as reports emerged that President Xi Jinping’s regime is moving forward with a controversial project that threatens to cause significant environmental and geopolitical disruption.

The project involves constructing the world’s largest dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo River. I Photo: Boqiang Liao Wikimedia Commons

Brahma Chellaney highlighted the issue in an opinion piece for The Hill.

The project involves constructing the world’s largest dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo River (known downstream as the Brahmaputra) as it flows through Earth’s deepest canyon before entering India.

Chinese state media recently confirmed the project’s approval in March 2021, signaling that construction is well underway.

The dam, located near the contested and militarized China-India border, is expected to have severe downstream effects on India and Bangladesh. These include altering the river’s flow, trapping nutrient-rich silt essential for fertilizing farmlands during annual floods, and disrupting marine ecosystems.

With an estimated cost of $127 billion, this super dam will overshadow China’s current Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest dam by capacity.

When completed, it is expected to generate up to 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, more than triple the Three Gorges Dam’s capacity of 88.2 billion kilowatt-hours. China's obsession with constructing monumental infrastructure projects persists, but critics warn of dire consequences for regional stability and environmental sustainability.