History & Hydrology: What You Don't Understand About China's New Dam

Forbes

5 days ago

Xi Jinping continues the Chinese tradition of leaders inspecting hydrological projects.
China officially began construction on the world's largest hydroelectric dam in the middle of July 2025. The Yarlung Zangbo project, also known by its Indian name of Brahmaputra, is set to be a marvel of engineering, requiring a gargantuan amount of capital and expertise to complete. With a price tag of over 170 billion dollars, the dam plans to utilize Tibet's high elevation and geography to generate consistent, massive water flows, ultimately yielding 300 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year. This would be triple the amount of electricity generated by the current largest dam, the Three Gorges Dam in China. For context, the famous Hoover Dam, located outside of Las Vegas, generates approximately 4 billion kWh of electricity per year.
In China's official announcement, state media quickly emphasized the project's green credentials and the massive engineering feat the dam's construction would represent. A deluge of concern about China controlling downstream river access for large parts of India and Bangladesh compelled China to officially reassure everyone that the project wouldn't impact downriver consumers. With Southeast Asian concerns over Chinese control of the source of the Mekong in mind, India remains skeptical. The fear: China may use its control over key water sources that supply hundreds of millions of people throughout South and Southeast Asia as political leverage.
While the world is understandably focusing on what this project means for downstream actors and geopolitics, more important domestic dimensions are being neglected. This project will have vital implications not just for China's economy, but it also signals important points about Chinese politics that the world must take note of.Hydrology In Chinese Memory And Foreign PolicyNo country or civilization has had hydrology in all its forms, from ancient irrigation and flood control to modern hydropower, imprint itself on the collective psyche as much as China. The mythical first emperor of China, Yu the Engineer, supposedly became emperor and founded China's Xia Dynasty because he was effective at flood control. Taming China's three major rivers – the Yellow, Pearl, and Yangtze Rivers – has been one of the chief responsibilities for every Chinese government since time immemorial. Failure to do so often heralded regime change, most famously when China's short-lived Sui Dynasty collapsed due to a combination of neglect and overreach concerning flood control and irrigation. Right before the modern People's Republic was founded in 1949, China was inundated with massive floods, helping to discredit the Nationalist Kuomintang government as it fled to Taiwan and, in accord with tradition, heralding a new government.
Control over these rivers has always provided China with considerable leverage against invaders and its neighbors. When the Mongols invaded southern China and sparked the most prolonged siege in Medieval history at Xianyang (1267-1273), the Chinese used clever water control to supply a key fortress for over 5 years. During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), China blew up the dikes for the Yellow River at Huayuankou, stalling the Japanese army and arguably saving China from conquest, but in the process exposing millions of civilians to deadly flooding and privations of all kinds.
Beyond China's interior, China's control of the Tibetan plateau affords it considerable leverage over all its neighbors. The Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, and Mekong rivers all originate in Chinese territory. This means collectively, China controls the primary water sources for roughly 2.1 billion people across South and Southeast Asia in nearly every country between Pakistan and Vietnam. That is just under one quarter of humanity.
Many of these countries, especially India and Vietnam, have undisguised fears that China will exercise control over these water sources for political leverage. It's already happened elsewhere. China's dominance of the Mekong River in particular has enabled it to reinforce its position in Laos and Cambodia, to the detriment of the local agricultural sectors whenever there is a shortfall of rain upstream within China.Hydropower In Modern China
China's Three Gorges Dam stands as both a testament to modern engineering, and a lesson for Chinese ... More policymakers.
For Chinese energy policymakers, hydropower holds an important position. Not only is it an effective means of generating electricity, but it also turns the historical obstacles of extreme flooding into modern boons of cheap energy. Hydropower is thus a practical tool and a source of state legitimacy. Shortly after the PRC was founded, the Chinese government began a 50-year flood control program that centered on hydropower.
During the Cultural Revolution, China's infamous crash-industrialization program that ultimately resulted in the worst famine in human history, Mao Zedong ordered the construction of thousands of dams across China. Throughout the Maoist era, dams and hydropower had a spotty record despite the focus lavished upon them. Their proliferation created problems of poor coordination, inefficient energy generation, and agricultural shortfalls. Mao's obsession with taming China's great rivers in a way no emperor had done only exacerbated China's economic woes.
Following the post-Mao reforms, the Chinese government resumed its efforts to utilize hydropower to build legitimacy and address economic challenges. The Three Gorges Dam, currently the largest dam in the world, was that project. What was supposed to be a symbol of a modern, more market-friendly China became a crisis. A book warning against the project, Yangtze! Yangtze!, was a favorite of the Tiananmen Square protestors, and its author was later forced into exile. The project displaced roughly 1.3 million people and caused sporadic protests and clashes between the displaced and authorities throughout the 1990s.
It was also a political landmine at China's highest levels that threatened the Communist Party's hold on power. China's National People's Congress, a rubber stamp legislature which has never rejected a piece of legislation from the Communist Party, had an unprecedented parliamentary revolt. 1/3rd of delegates voted no, and another chunk abstained, meaning the legislation passed squeaked by the narrowest of margins. China's former prime minister, Zhu Rongji, who shepherded China into the WTO, broke a government directive forbidding official criticism when he spoke out against the project in 1999. Only later in 2007 did the Chinese government admit the Three Gorges Dam 'Has caused an array of ecological and social ills'. The original announcement of this admission has since disappeared from Chinese state media.
Despite its numerous shortcomings, Three Gorges ultimately succeeded, and there is evidence that Chinese policymakers learned from its shortcomings. Hydropower now accounts for 13% of China's electricity consumption, and its relatively clean nature is encouraging to environmentalists. The remote location of the new dam also defuses many ecological and political obstacles and creates another means of solidifying China's control over Tibet. It will also assist China in effectively managing water for other energy and water-intensive initiatives, such as AI or solar panel production.
However impressive a feat of engineering or however much electricity is generated, or even how many disputes in international relations arise, Yarlung Zangbo is, at the end of the day, a project that is inseparable from Chinese prestige and history and the Chinese Communist Party's understanding of its recent political missteps. Only when one views it as such, beyond just another energy project in a nation full of massive energy projects, can its full importance be understood. Yarlung Zangbo is set to go forward just as much for the aggrandizement of China as it is for electricity.