R*I
发帖数: 1840 | 1 小白兔这个冤啊，人家本来是人畜无害
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4f19a01e-d2f1-11e0-9aae-
00144feab49a.html#axzz1Wc29O400
Water is the new weapon in Beijing’s armoury
By Brahma Chellaney
The writer is a professor at the independent Centre for Policy Research
in
New Delhi and author of Water: Asia’s New Battleground
China has aroused international alarm by using its virtual monopoly of
rare
earths as a trade instrument and by stalling multilateral efforts to
resolve
disputes in the South China Sea. Among its neighbours, there is deep
concern at the way it is seeking to make water a political weapon.
At the hub of Asia, China is the source of cross-border river flows to
the
largest number of countries in the world – from Russia to India,
Kazakhstan
to the Indochina peninsula. This results from its absorption of the
ethnic
minority homelands that make up 60 per cent of its land mass and are the
origin of all the important international rivers flowing out of Chinese
territory.
Getting this pre-eminent riparian power to accept water-sharing
arrangements
or other co-operative institutional mechanisms has proved unsuccessful
so
far in any basin. Instead, the construction of upstream dams on
international rivers such as the Mekong, Brahmaputra or Amur shows China
is
increasingly bent on unilateral actions, impervious to the concerns of
downstream nations.
China already boasts both the world’s biggest dam (Three Gorges) and a
greater total number of dams than the rest of the world combined. It has
shifted its focus from internal to international rivers, and graduated
from
building large dams to building mega-dams. Among its newest dams on the
Mekong is the 4,200 megawatt Xiaowan – taller than Paris’s Eiffel Tower.
New dams approved for construction include one on the Brahmaputra at
Metog (
or Motuo in Chinese) that is to be twice the size of the 18,300MW Three
Gorges – and sited almost on the disputed border with India.
The consequences of such frenetic construction are already clear. First,
China is in water disputes with almost all its neighbours, from Russia
and
India to weak client-states such as North Korea and Burma. Second, its
new
focus on water mega-projects in the homelands of ethnic minorities has
triggered tensions over displacement and submergence at a time when the
Tibetan plateau, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia have all been wracked by
protests against Chinese rule. Third, the projects threaten to replicate
in
international rivers the degradation haunting China’s internal rivers.
Yet, as if to declare itself the world’s unrivalled hydro-hegemon, China
is
also the largest dam builder overseas. From Pakistan-held Kashmir to
Burma
’s troubled Kachin and Shan states, China is building dams in disputed
or
insurgency-torn areas, despite local backlash. Dam building in Burma has
contributed to renewed fighting, ending a 17-year ceasefire between the
Kachin Independence Army and government.
For downriver countries, a key concern is China’s opacity on its dam
projects. It usually begins work quietly, almost furtively, then
presents a
project as unalterable and as holding flood-control benefits.
Worse, although there are water treaties among states in south and
south-
east Asia, Beijing rejects the concept of a water-sharing arrangement.
It is
one of only three countries that voted against the 1997 UN convention
laying down rules on the shared resources of international watercourses.
Yet water is fast becoming a cause of competition and discord between
countries in Asia, where per capita freshwater availability is less than
half the global average. The growing water stress threatens Asia’s rapid
economic growth and carries risks for investors potentially as damaging
as
non-performing loans, real estate bubbles and political corruption.
By having its hand on Asia’s water tap, China is therefore acquiring
tremendous leverage over its neighbours’ behaviour.
That the country controlling the headwaters of major Asian rivers is
also a
rising superpower, with a muscular confidence increasingly on open
display,
only compounds the need for international pressure on Beijing to halt
its
appropriation of shared waters and accept some form of institutionalised
co-
operation. |
