Abstract

China is advancing an interconnected suite of hydraulic mega-projects on the Tibetan Plateau driven by severe domestic water and energy security imperatives. This paper examines three projects central to this strategy that affect transboundary rivers: the Mêdog (墨脱) Hydropower Station, now under construction on the Yarlung Tsangpo; the Red Flag River (红旗河) inter-basin transfer proposal, not officially approved but, if built, would become the world’s largest inter-basin water transfer project, redirecting water from transboundary rivers in Tibet to arid northwest China; and the upper Lancang–Mekong (澜沧江-湄公河) hydropower cascade, China’s 12-dam operational system on the upper Mekong, which provides the most instructive precedent for what large-scale Chinese dam operations mean for downstream governance. What is conspicuously absent is any commensurate advance in the governance architecture for managing their transboundary effects. The China–India hydrological data-sharing MoU on the Brahmaputra expired on June 5, 2023; full data sharing has been suspended since then, with only a limited, conditional arrangement emerging following high-level diplomatic engagement in 2025. Bangladesh, the most exposed downstream state, has no formal mechanism to assert its interests. This paper argues that the governance gap is not inevitable—it reflects the absence of institutional architecture that all parties have a shared interest in building—and advances targeted recommendations for European governments, multilateral institutions, and downstream states.

Introduction

The Qinghai–Tibet Plateau—often called Asia’s “Water Tower”—is the headwater source of 10 major river systems, supplying freshwater to approximately 1.4 billion people across China and downstream nations. China’s hydro-engineering ambitions on the plateau are driven by structural necessity that is both real and well-documented. Groundwater levels are falling by approximately one meter per year across parts of the North China Plain, causing land subsidence and permanently compromising future recharge capacity as underground pore spaces collapse. Approximately three-quarters of China’s national grain output comes from irrigated land, and that irrigated agriculture faces intensifying water scarcity concentrated in the north. China’s green energy transition also requires the mobilization of Tibet’s hydropower potential: the Mêdog project’s projected 300 billion kilowatt-hours of annual generation connects directly to China’s carbon neutrality commitments and to surging artificial intelligence and data center electricity demand, which the International Energy Agency projects will increase by approximately 170 percent between 2024 and 2030.

China shares over 40 major transboundary watercourses with neighboring countries and has described its water infrastructure as contributing to regional flood prevention and stability. The governance critique advanced in this paper is not premised on the absence of legitimate Chinese interests, nor does it presume bad faith on Beijing’s part. It rests instead on the structural inadequacy of existing frameworks to accommodate China’s legitimate domestic interests alongside the equally legitimate concerns of downstream nations—a gap that, left unaddressed, ultimately serves no party well, including China itself.

The character of China’s transboundary water governance arrangements reflects the broader geopolitical texture of its bilateral relationships. China has developed its strongest institutional frameworks with northern neighbors. With Kazakhstan, a landmark 2001 Cooperation Agreement on the Use and Protection of Transboundary Rivers established a formal Joint River Commission, supplemented by a 2011 Water Quality Protection Agreement and ongoing allocation negotiations covering more than 20 shared rivers. With Russia, a 2008 Agreement on the Reasonable Utilization and Protection of Transboundary Waters—formally archived by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (中华人民共和国外交部)—established a Joint Commission with dedicated working groups on water quality monitoring, resources management, and emergency response to pollution incidents. With Mongolia, a 1994 Agreement on the Protection and Utilization of Transboundary Waters establishes the principle that utilization “shall not cause harm to the reasonable use of transboundary waters” and explicitly addresses ecological conservation and equitable use. By contrast, China’s arrangements with southern riparian states are consistently narrower, more consultative, and less legally substantive. As Wouters and Devlaeminck have documented, this asymmetry reflects the structural tendency of China’s transboundary water governance to prioritize upstream sovereign prerogatives over legally binding basin-wide rules—a tendency most pronounced in its most geopolitically contested river relationships. The institutional precedents for more substantive arrangements exist within China’s own treaty portfolio, as the comparative table (Table 1) demonstrates.

One further dimension shapes the analysis. Glacier area on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau decreased over 58 percent between 1976 and 2024, with large-scale retreat across the Himalayas, Hengduan Mountains, and Qilian Mountains. Accelerating melt currently inflates river flows, but the long-term trajectory will reduce base flows as ice reserves are exhausted, progressively altering the hydrological baseline against which dam operations are assessed. As climate change alters what rivers carry naturally, attribution of downstream flow variability—to dam operations, glacial retreat, or rainfall patterns—will become extraordinarily difficult without independent, verifiable data. This makes building transparent data-sharing architecture now, before the Mêdog cascade is operational, a matter of practical urgency for all parties.

Three projects define China’s current plateau strategy. This paper assesses each in turn, before examining the governance architecture on the Lancang–Mekong as a comparative framework and drawing out the governance deficit and policy implications for European and Indo-Pacific actors.