Denouncing Concerns, China Goes Ahead With Medog Dam on Tsangpo

Aiming to achieve carbon-neutrality by 2060 and proposing an engineering marvel to the global community, China started the construction of a colossal hydropower dam in Tibet prompting cautious observation with concerns from India and Bangladesh. Soon after Chinese Premier Li Qiang attended the groundbreaking ceremony of the dam on Yarlung Zangbo/ Tsangpo (Brahmaputra in India)  river at Medog locality of Tibet autonomous region on 19 July 2025, opposition voices started emerging. The Communist party-led Beijing administration projected the dam as the world's largest hydropower project with an investment of   USD 167.8 billion and optimum potential of generating nearly 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity every year. It’s also expected to generate income of USD 3 billion annually meant for the Tibetan region. Beijing had already constructed and commissioned a number of small dams on Tsangpo before planning for the gigantic Medog power station.

After concerns floated by lower riparian nations namely India and Bangladesh, the  Tibetans residing inside and outside Tibet started demonstrating their anxiety and anger against the imperialist Communist administration in Beijing. Tibetan Buddhists remain concerned over the mega-dam projects in their territory as those may pose serious threats to the fragile environment after disrupting the natural flow of rivers, impacting their culture and ways of life and finally disrupting their traditional livelihoods. So the freedom aspiring Tibetans continue their fights for a genuine & greater autonomy so that they can safeguard their religious, cultural and political rights. Thousands of agitating Tibetans were detained after their demonstrations against those dams.

However, Beijing has gone ahead with its heavy resource exploitation programs in the Tibetan plateau ignoring its recognized forest and wildlife reserves. Often called Third Pole on Earth, Tibet feeds a number of rivers (including the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Salween, Yangtze, Mekong, etc which flow through Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam) supporting over 1.5 billion populace living in the south & southeast Asian nations. Beijing’s continuous hydro-electric activities in the seismically active Tibetan plateau are apprehended to put millions of people in the lower riparian countries under risk while managing their agriculture, fish-farming, water transportation and daily consumption.

The Chinese foreign ministry on 23 July defended its decision to go ahead with the Medog hydropower project as it falls ‘fully within China's sovereignty’ and aims to speed up clean energy development as well as proactively responding to climate change. The view was denounced by the exiled Tibetans in India stating that the matter of sovereignty was dragged by Beijing to pursue the forceful rule of communist China and dominations over the natural resources of Tibet by subjugating the rights and voices of Tibetans over the resources of their motherland. Regarding the Beijing’s assurance of ‘no major riparian impacts on downstream regions’ as the project was accepted after rigorous scientific evaluations, the Tibetans put a question mark over the sincerity of the communist regime, which considers all matters related to the rivers in a forcefully occupied territory remain under its sovereign power.

Tibetan Journal, a media outlet from Dharamshala, the seat of 14th Dalai Lama in north India, reported on 2 August that the said mega dam at the head of Brahmaputra is a matter of grave concern for the people of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh in particular, as it’s a part of communist China’s water war strategy against the downstream regions.  Terming Tsangpo as an important river for Tibetan ecology,  history and spirituality, the news outlet also mentioned about the Save Tsangpo-Siang-Brahmaputra campaign gaining ground in northeast India. The campaign argues that Tibet must be freed from the occupation of Beijing, not for the sake of freedom aspiring Tibetans, but also India’s strategic security and the global peace. Tibetans, by their nature, are the custodians of  rivers, forests, glaciers, minerals, and all other resources available in the Tibetan plateau, and so Beijing’s claim over the Tibetan rivers as well as damming of those sacred water flows should be identified as a serious crime to the human race.

“The People’s Republic of China and India are not signatories to the 1992 UNECE Water Convention (also known as the Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes). This puts the Indian side in a difficult position, wherein New Delhi can neither accuse communist China over violation of trans-boundary water law, or assert its demands over flow of the river from the Tibetan plateau. In such condition, the exploitation of Tibetan rivers like Yarlung Tsangpo by communist China raises serious humanitarian and ecological threats to the downstream people in India,” said the report, adding that ‘Tibetan and Indian environment activists, and environment workers from around the world must come together to stop this mega dam to save one of the most pristine and rare Himalayan ecosystems from vanishing’.

Earlier, the Hong Kong-based English newspaper South China Morning Post editorialized the issue, arguing that transparency would be a key to ease out regional concerns over the mega dam. The influential newspaper on 29 July published an editorial stating that when the Chinese Premier broke ground for the mega-dam’s construction, he marked the start of one of the most extraordinary infrastructure projects across the world. With delicate diplomatic handling, this ‘project of the century’ can build goodwill and help south Asia’s water-dependent economies, asserted the editorial, adding that the project is expected to benefit not only the local Tibetan economy, but also regional development with the capacity of supplying clean power to 300 million people (including the residents of nearby countries like Nepal, Bhutan, India, Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Speaking to this writer from Dharamshala, an exiled Tibetan expressed annoyance that Beijing continues looking for ways to exploit the water resources inside Tibet. Stating that China today operates the highest number of hydropower projects in the world, but Beijing is yet to be exhausted. After commissioning the Three Gorges Dam a decade back, now the Communist regime has gone for another and much bigger hydropower station inside Tibet. Pointing to the location of Medog project, the Tibetans in-exile feared that any major earthquake in the seismic zone would devastate the downstream localities. The lack of transparency regarding the project's design and post-disaster impact studies will always hunt the people living in Tibet as well as in India and Bangladesh.

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