China Is Building the World's Largest Dam

Deep in the heart of Tibet the world is on the precipice of greatness, breaking new boundaries in size and scale for infrastructure that has never been seen before. China is building one hell of a dam. We’re talking billions of cubic metres of water, tonnes upon tonnes of concrete, and the largest hydropower station ever built, capable of providing power to literal hundreds of millions of homes. If you forgive the pun, it promises to blow everything to ever come before it out of the water.

But building something so massive comes with a whole host of challenges that are equally massive. How is it going to be built? Will it be able to manage natural disasters in a region known for its earthquakes? And what is the real reason that China wants to build it?

Giving a Dam

So, the biggest dam in the entire world, eh? China better have a good place to build it. And as luck would have it, they do! Deep in the West of China in the Tibet Autonomous Region and near the Indian border of the semi-disputed region of Arunachal Pradesh, there is a river known as the Yarlung Tsangpo, this is in the county of Medog (in Chinese it’s called Mutuo) in Nyingtri prefecture.

The Yarlung Tsangpo river exists in a very steep canyon, in fact it is the biggest canyon in the entire world, being three times deeper, and 37 miles longer than the United States’ Grand Canyon. And this river simply has enormously high potential for immense hydropower generation. In one section alone, the river falls a full 2,000 metres (or 6,000 feet) in just 50 kilometres (or just over 31 miles) creating massive rapids and torrents of water that could turn turbines at high speeds until the cows come home.

Within the canyon, the river makes a sharp horseshoe turn known as the Great Bend, and it is right here, right on the border with India, that the world’s largest dam is being planned to be built.

Back in 2020, it was announced that the project was being considered, and in 2024 it gained approval from the Chinese government to go ahead. So, for now it’s still in the planning stages, but given China’s track record of building huge infrastructure projects it would take something pretty spectacular for Beijing to change its mind. There will be a dam here.

Ok, so what do we know about it? Well… actually… not a whole lot. We know that it’s definitely been approved, and we also know how much energy China plans to generate with it, around 60 Gigawatts of power. That’s hard to quantify so let’s use a concept we all can understand, toast!

A Watt, is one unit of electrical energy, a gigawatt is equal to one billion watts. A toaster depending on the make, model, and year it was made uses between 800 and 1500 watts to turn your boring old bread into delicious crunchy toast. Let’s split the difference and call it 1,150 watts. That means that potentially, when completed, the Medog dam will be capable of powering over 52 million toasters at the same time.

That’s a lot of toast.

We also know how much it is going to cost, at least according to rough estimates by the Chinese government for a project that hasn’t even broken ground yet. One Trillion Chinese Yuan. Yes. Trillion.

With a T. In dollars that equates to around $127 billion USD according to estimates by the Chongyi Water Resources. For that money you could buy the 52 million toasters to test the power output and still have some change left over for a plate and some eggs. That is an awful lot of money though for a single dam.

By comparison, the current largest dam in the world, the famous Three Gorges Dam that sits on the Yangtze River, cost the equivalent of about $34 billion dollars by the time it was fully completed in 2012. That’s over three and a half times cheaper.

Ok, sure, but why is it going to be so expensive? Well, it is going to be the world’s largest dam for a start, planning to completely dwarf the output of China’s current world record holder. A bigger dam typically means greater expense. The amount of money that will need to be spent on equipment and manhours alone for this project will likely be extortionate; that’s without even thinking about the sheer cost of the steel and concrete that will be required to build it.

And that’s also before a single generator gets put in or it gets hooked up to the grid. All those wires and piping cost money too you know.

But the process to build a dam here is also part of why the Medog dam is going to be so pricey. This region of Tibet is pretty remote, because its basically on top of the world. The terrain is difficult to work in, especially at this altitude and there are a lot of geological problems that a project like this will need to overcome… but we’ll get to that later.

We also know the process of building the dam in and of itself will be expensive. When dams are built, the river water has to go somewhere, because it’s really hard to hold soggy blueprints, and it’s even harder to pour concrete when you’re actively drowning. So, what can you do?

Well, you have to divert the flow of the river, which is no mean feat, especially for Tibet’s longest river, a process that is essentially China sticking its tongue out at mother nature. Diversion tunnels or channels have to be bored through the rock in order to get the river’s flow out of the way. In the Medog dam’s case, there needs to be four 20-kilometre-long tunnels drilled through the Namcha Barwa mountain and then be reconnected further downriver to handle all of the water.

Diversion tunnels are often lined with concrete, so add that to the cost, and they’re usually absolutely huge as well because they have a lot of water to handle, and one of those collapsing mid-construction would be very bad news for everyone involved.

After this the bed of the river is usually excavated down to solid bedrock, and then the concrete can start to be poured and the dam built. Following this, the important stuff gets added in like spillways, intake towers, transmission lines, and of course, the turbines themselves which are carefully engineered hulking behemoths in their own right. After that the dam’s reservoir is allowed to slowly fill back up again over the course of years or sometimes even decades, and voila!

You have a functioning hydropower station. But it’s fair to say that with this one being planned to be the largest on the entire planet, every step will need to be meticulously delivered by scores of engineers all perfectly working together in harmony. And it also remains to be seen whether the sheer size of this one will require alternative techniques to build it.

That certainly isn’t easy, but this is China we’re talking about, if anyone can deliver a megaproject on this scale, it is Beijing.

Unlimited Power

So, obviously building this dam is an enormous undertaking the likes of which has never been seen on earth before. So there has to be a good reason to spend a trillion Yuan on it. And if you ask Beijing, there definitely is.

For starters, it is estimated that the Medog hydropower station could generate at least three times more energy than the world famous Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze, with more ambitious numbers gauging that it could generate as much as five times the power at its peak. That’s an awful lot of electricity, but China needs it, especially as its industrial capabilities continue to grow and its technological advancements get more and more complex.

The Three Gorges Dam currently generates the most hydroelectric power of any dam in the world today, supplying electricity for between 70 and 80 million Chinese homes every year. So even by the most conservative estimates, that would equate to roughly the ability to power 210 million Chinese homes every year. China itself, with its 1.4 billion population, has around 474 million households as of 2021 according to Global Data, meaning that if accurate, even on the low end this dam could generate electricity for almost half the homes in China over the course of a year.

That wouldn’t be all at once of course like with our toaster example, but whichever way you look at it, that is astonishing. And obviously a lot of that electricity won’t be used just for households, but it speaks to the sheer scale of China’s clean energy revolution. It’s also worth noting that the Yarlung Tsangpo river does change a lot seasonally with regards to water flow so it’s unlikely to be able to be at that maximum capacity all the time, but that’s really splitting hairs over what a staggering achievement this could end up being.

For Beijing it’s “go big or go home” every time when it comes to infrastructure. And with the Medog Dam potentially generating around 300 billion kilowatt-hours of energy per year, it’s safe to say they’ve chosen the “go big” option once again.

The Medog dam would also allow China to make significant strides towards its clean energy goals, especially those of reaching a peak in carbon emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060… if we’re not all already underwater by then anyway. Whilst China is currently the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, it has been slowly transitioning to green energy, especially through the use of hydropower. Because of all the dams on rivers, China is single-handedly driving down the global use of coal.

And no matter which way you shake it, that’s a lot better for the planet. China also, to its credit, leads the world in green energy development, having invested the equivalent of $890 billion dollars in renewables in 2023 alone.

Chinese state media has described the dam’s development as “a safe project that prioritises ecological protection,” as well as claiming that it will increase prosperity in the region through the arrival of infrastructure, money, and jobs. And as we all know the Chinese government would never lie about its infrastructure projects effects on the environment. But if you take it at face value, that’s another potential positive.

But the economic benefits may certainly be true, the Chinese economy’s growth has slowed quite a lot since the pandemic (slow for China at least) and a big infrastructure project like this is just what the doctor ordered to give the economy a much-needed shot in the arm. Such a massive infrastructure project will create tens of thousands of jobs in various roles from construction workers and civil engineers all the way to hiring managers and administrators. In theory that will even help lift up the local prosperity of the region too with more money circulating through the local economy. The dam’s reservoir of fresh water will help alleviate water shortages for people living across the Tibetan plateau too, especially as the locals rely on glacier melt for their water, which climate change is heavily disrupting.

But it’s not all sunshine and helping each other, China certainly has its practical reasons for building such massive infrastructure in Tibet. A positive from the perspective of Beijing will be that these enormous projects symbolise the power of the state, and is an ever-present massive concrete boot on the neck of Tibetans, who have opposed this kind of infrastructure before. When another dam was announced as going ahead in 2024 in Sichuan on the Jinsha river, it saw protests from the locals, and the Chinese state responded with beatings and arrests.

The message is clear, Tibet is Chinese, and they have the massive dams to prove it. It’s not just water and concrete; it’s a gigantic statement of intent and a symbol of Beijing’s power over a region which has resisted it since it was captured back in the 50s. The state will do as it wills, and the Tibetans will suffer what they must.

Shake, Rattle, and Roll

And that leads us nicely into the cons and critiques of this huge project. Because despite the many positive aspects of its creation for Beijing, especially in terms of raw power output, building something this large, and building it here specifically, poses a unique set of challenges and factors that the Chinese government will need to take into account.

For starters, this project is going to be an extremely complex one to complete, even for a country like China and its civil engineering prowess. This is the deepest canyon in the world, travelling 500 metres down in some areas. It has no major highways currently connecting it to the rest of the country in any meaningful capacity like would be needed to set up a project this large, so that all needs to be built through high-altitude terrain.

There are a lot of technical challenges to building a dam this size in a canyon full of water this deep, meaning it will likely take at least a decade if not longer to complete because of the geographic isolation of the Tibetan plateau making it costly and difficult. And that’s even with China building it, the people capable of knocking up a bridge in an afternoon just for a laugh. Sure, if anyone can do it, it’s the Chinese, but that doesn’t mean it will be easy.

However, it’s not just the inhospitable geography that makes it challenging to build the Medog dam here. You see, this part of the Tibetan plateau is located on a fault line where the Eurasian tectonic plate meets the Indian plate, these two plates are currently pushing against each other and forcing the land upwards, which is what created the Himalayas and the very high altitudes in this part of the world. These plates are also pretty active and still continue to push against one another, as a result mountains like Mount Everest actually get taller by a few millimetres every year.

But because of these active plates, this region is extremely prone to earthquakes, which threatens to cause a total disaster once the dam is built. Imagine for a minute that this dam isn’t just an idea or a plan, but a completed piece of infrastructure, and one day a massive quake causes structural failures in to occur within it. The massive reservoir of water it was holding back overpowers the weakened structure and it breaks, cascading a torrent of water downstream, flooding and destroying everything in its path.

See the issue now? This isn’t just a hypothetical, this is a very real possibility that the Chinese engineers are going to have to overcome.

But it’s not even necessarily a potential earthquake that could damage the dam, it’s the possibility of major landslides as a result of mud and rock shaken loose by the earthquake. The Himalayas are regularly hit by earthquakes, landslides, and avalanches and all of these kinds of events threaten the safety of dams even without the possibility of destroying them completely.

Earlier this year in January of 2025, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck near the city of Shigatse, a Tibetan city that the Yarlung Tsangpo flows directly past to the North. 126 people were confirmed dead, 188 more were injured, and thousands of homes were destroyed. On top of that, cracks appeared on five of the 14 hydropower stations in Tibet, that’s over a third. Three of them had to be completely emptied for repairs and to stop a catastrophic tidal wave crashing down stream.

Meanwhile in March of 2021, a glacier collapse led to a huge landslide that blocked the Yarlung Tsangpo River with over 100 million tonnes of rock and ice. This caused water levels to rise over 10 metres in the river downstream, that’s 30 feet, more than three storeys. Meanwhile back in October of 2018, debris from glacier-based landslides temporarily blocked the river and flooded the valley nearby as a result.

Thankfully, in both situations, swift emergency evacuations prevented any deaths, but the floods caused a lot of damage to surrounding infrastructure. A hydropower station is a very complex piece of equipment, and the future Medog one getting flooded, damaged, or buried in debris would be a real issue and very expensive to fix, it simply adds a lot to the level of risk this part of the world already faces geologically. The massive construction and excavation efforts have also been touted as potential factors by Chinese researchers as a risk because it could increase the prevalence of landslides, as natural defences will be torn away.

In 2022, a senior engineer from the Sichuan provincial geological bureau agreed, stating: “Earthquake-induced landslides and mud-rock flows are often uncontrollable and will also pose a huge threat to the project.”

The reality is, China can have all the contingencies and the best engineers and building plans in the world, but there’s only so much humans can control the unpredictable wrath of mother nature. You can stick your tongue out at her, but she’ll do a lot more than that in return.

Hydro-Hegemony

For being so complex and seismically risky, you would expect a hydropower station this large to serve a massive population centre, or other huge industrial projects in the region that need the extra juice. But Medog has a population of 15,000 people, a far cry from the tens of millions in other regions around the country. Tibet is generally pretty sparsely populated and does not need a lot of energy to function, nor are there enormous agricultural or industrial projects that would need the water or electricity nearby. The closest might be the massive agricultural lands and farms for growing cotton in Xinjiang, where the similarly oppressed Uighur population resides, but that’s over 1,000 kilometres away as the crow flies.

The dams capacity would also greatly exceed what other neighbouring provinces require to function, build, and grow. Nearby the regions of Sichuan and Yunnan have many hydropower plants, producing more energy than they need, so routing the power or water to them doesn’t appear overly sensible when they have equivalent sources closer to home. Perhaps the region of Qinghai to the North could use it, but there’s nothing to indicate that’s the plan right now.

Not to mention, sending that electricity and water hundreds or even thousands of kilometres to other parts of China is really inefficient and expensive. So, that leaves a bit of a funny question that needs to be asked.

What is this dam actually for?

In theory building this dam makes sense especially because of how much power it can generate, but building it here of all places doesn’t. It appears indicative of strategic ambitions for the region as a whole, or it could have an international element to it, rather than it being about producing electricity. It might be that the Chinese government are intent on industrialising the region to bring it more in line with the rest of the country, but that would be a diversion from their strategy around Tibet thus far.

It could be that China is planning to sell the access to fresh water or electricity to other countries, that would at least make use of the surplus and it being on the border, but that would likely require a lengthy negotiation process and regional powers could be sceptical of buying precious resources from China when they control the flow of them. It would also require the same massive transfer of energy and water long distances.

It could also be that China are using the power and water for something specific that they are planning to build later, like a massive server farm for a powerful artificial intelligence. AI needs a tremendous amount of water and power to work, and cryptocurrency mining, or quantum computing would also be utilised this way, but does China want to put that kind of infrastructure within a dissident region, or on the doorstep of foreign powers? That’s the CCP’s judgement call to make but it doesn’t appear very wise from a geopolitical standpoint. Other infrastructural agricultural projects could be built here on the plateau, but the landscape doesn’t really lend itself to those kind of projects, whilst battery storage farms have that same issue of transferring the energy elsewhere even after its stored.

So, what gives? What are they building this enormous dam with all of its energy generating capacity for? Officially, the state says its simply for clean energy and to promote prosperity of the region, but unofficially? Your guess is as good as ours here. China isn’t exactly forthcoming when it comes to information about their massive strategic infrastructure projects, but that in of itself gives us a clue. Because the lack of information is likely to have other countries tugging at their collars, here’s why.

The glaciers of the Tibetan plateau are called many things, some refer to the area as “The Third Pole” because of the sheer amount of ice found at this altitude, but we prefer it’s other name: the world’s water tower.

In taking control over Tibet’s waterways, China becomes the upstream controller of seven of South Asia’s largest rivers. The Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Irrawaddy, the Salween, the Yangtze, and the Mekong all originate right here before cascading down throughout South and Southeast Asia to provide life, food, and livelihoods for tens, if not hundreds of millions of people.

And that is significant. The rivers that originate here, not just the seven largest, flow into Pakistan, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia. There is over 700 billion cubic metres of fresh surface water actively flowing out of Tibet, providing the largest river run-off of any location in the entire world. We’re talking hundreds of millions of people, possibly over a billion individuals who rely on water to survive that starts right here.

We’ll give you two guesses as to why that might be advantageous to the Chinese Communist Party.

Having control of the origins of these rivers fuelled by the glacial melt on the Tibetan plateau, gives Beijing an awful lot of power over what happens downriver in these other countries. This is called “hydro-hegemony” and it’s a very strong position for China to be in. Say a country like Bangladesh does something that Beijing doesn’t like; millions of people could find the river that keeps their people alive dammed, polluted, or diverted.

Take the Mekong for example, there are 12 Chinese mega-dams built on the river and plans for a 13th. And China has largely operated them under the guise of self-interest over international cooperation. China doesn’t even necessarily have to build anything new or embark on mass infrastructure projects to turn the screw on other countries.

At present, countries that share these rivers with China also trade data on those rivers with Beijing, but if China chooses to, they can simply withhold upstream data which can cause major issues if there are trends that countries downstream can’t see coming like advanced seasonal surge warnings for example.

48% of that over 700 billion cubic metres of water runs directly into India, and the Yarlung Tsangpo is no different, flowing through the Indian-administered, but Chinese-contested region of Arunachal Pradesh. And let’s just say India and China haven’t been getting along well lately between border clashes in contested regions and India’s continuous rivalry with Chinese ally, Pakistan. The Medog dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo is one of the major tributaries that feeds the mighty Brahmaputra, and there suddenly being the biggest dam on earth there that can control the flow of water that over 100 million people rely on means that if push comes to shove, China has both India and Bangladesh in a stranglehold. Bangladesh is simply a casualty of war in this larger battle over control for South Asia, India is Beijing’s real priority here.

Especially with India starting to do the same kind of thing to Pakistan, even in spite of the Indus water treaty, it could compel China to do the same to New Delhi in return.

And China does have a history of doing this, in 2020 after clashes between Chinese and Indian forces in the Galwan Valley, a part of the ever-contested region of Kashmir near the de facto Chinese line of control, China chose to limit the flow of the Galwan River, a tributary of the Indus which originates in the Chinese-administered Kashmiri region of Aksai Chin. They did this by blocking the flow of the river through dredging, whilst also diverting its flow. The same could happen to the Brahmaputra, especially with the enormous dam that China now wants to build upriver.

This threatens to do more than just dry up the riverbed though, millions could be cut off from the fresh drinking water and fish that they would need to live, India could struggle to irrigate its crops leading to regional food scarcity in an already poor part of the world, and India’s own dams could struggle to generate hydropower of their own. Meanwhile, sediment trapped by the dam can diminish soil fertility and accelerate erosion. In short, if they chose to, such a dam could cause an ecological disaster for both India and Bangladesh, and there’s not a whole lot they’d be able to do about it.

Shortly after China announced its plans for the Yarlung Tsangpo dam project in 2020, a senior Indian government official told Reuters that India’s government was exploring the development of a large hydropower dam and reservoir “to mitigate the adverse impact of the Chinese dam projects”. But this would likely not be able to totally offset China’s dam by itself. It is a difficult position for New Delhi.

China responded to India’s concerns about the proposed dam in 2020 that China was well within its rights to dam a river controlled by its own territory, and that it had “considered downstream impacts.” But that’s like me saying that I have considered the impacts of punching you in the face, I could still do it anyway, but at least I considered them.

Into the Unknown

One of the most concerning things about the Medog dam project is how much we don’t know. As we mentioned China aren’t exactly giving their information away like Halloween candy, and so we have some pretty sizeable gaps when it comes to the effects the dam could have on the local people, flora, and fauna that live there.

In terms of people, it’s possible for the construction of a dam this large could displace local communities who often do not have a choice over being forced to move. What’s concerning is that this is an ongoing theme for China in general. The Three Gorges Dam required the resettlement of 1.4 million people, and whilst the area around the Yarlung Tsangpo River is far less populated than that, people are still going to lose their homes. In Tibet alone over 120,000 people have already been displaced, and whilst China has done this across their nation, acts like this always look more sinister when done in places like Tibet, where opposition to Chinese rule is significant.

Other dams built on the Tibetan plateau have ended up submerging ancient monasteries with sacred Buddhists relics and murals still inside them, ruining religious and cultural artifacts for the majority Buddhist Tibet. The potential loss of livelihoods, cultural heritage, and social cohesion could result in Tibetans becoming even more marginalised. But it’s unknown whether for Beijing, this is more of a bug or an intended feature given the government’s attitudes towards Tibet historically.

For the government’s part, whenever it has moved people from Tibet in the past it has stated that locals were compensated whilst ancient murals were moved to safety. However, it’s hard to know whether that’s really true as this would represent a change from the norm for the CCP, who don’t care for religion or non-homogeneity, and it goes against reports from reputable news sources about Buddhist relics and monasteries being lost to the water. It’s also worth pointing out that there are other ethnic minorities living in Tibet that are not Tibetan, in fact the word “Tibetan” can be used to describe several connected ethnic groups that live in the region, like Sherpas for example.

They too may end up being moved by Beijing, and their cultural heritage could be lost as well.

In terms of the wildlife, the Tibetan Plateau has a lot of unique local ecosystems that exist in the area where the dam will be built, which equate to some of the richest and most diverse on the entire Tibetan Plateau. The significant excavation, construction, and water diversion is likely to affect the flora and fauna in the area, which include plenty of endangered species like snow leopards and Tibetan antelopes for example.

It affects the water-based species arguably even more, seeing as the natural river will be altered with the large reservoir of the dam. Downstream fish lose nutrients from the sediment that they would have used for food but is now trapped in the reservoir. Spawning grounds for some fish species and even insects can also be affected, fundamentally affecting the food chain and causing ecosystems over time to deteriorate and eventually collapse.

Case studies from the Lancang-Mekong River reveal that the large dams along it reduced sediment flow by over 50 percent. This kind of decrease leads to less biodiversity and lower fish populations, and when so many people downstream of some rivers rely on those fish for food, that can become a problem. Ecosystems are fragile things, and destabilising with them with massive infrastructure building has yet to work out well for native species.

Manshi Asher, a climate activist, and researcher based in North India, told Radio Free Asia when discussing the prevalence of this phenomenon: “As far as hydropower projects in the Himalaya are concerned, there is already substantial evidence of their negative impacts.”

So, there are an awful lot of downsides, or at the very least more negative consequences of building the Medog dam. But for China, it’s likely that these impacts haven’t just been considered, but likely acted upon because they work towards China’s interests. Having another tool to potentially harm India with is strategically valuable for Beijing, whilst local Tibetan Buddhist populations getting more disconnected from their holy sites is likely a feature of building the Medog dam in an ongoing campaign to bring Tibet in line.

Meanwhile China has never been one to let a few ecosystems get in the way of some top-quality infrastructure. Only the effects of natural disasters will have been seen to have any tangible effect on the Chinese state itself, and China either trusts their engineers to complete another ambitious project that can overcome these issues, or they see some natural disasters as the cost of doing business in this regard, and its in a remote dissident region anyway. No matter which way you shake it, for Beijing the upsides absolutely outweigh the downsides when it comes to the power generation.

Especially when you consider that, just like with this video, the world will be watching, eager to ask China for help with their own projects as a result.

What Comes Next?

So how far are we in the process of the dam being built? What does the timeline look like? And how might it affect things for years to come?

Well, the project’s construction is yet to begin. It’s been approved but surveys of the grounds will have to be done to find the exact right place to build before plans are properly drawn up and shovels break ground. Although we do know that it is likely to be built on the great bend itself. It’s due to start being built around 2029, and is expected to enter into commercial operation by 2033.

What that does do is give China, Tibet, and the surrounding regions in other countries time to work out the kinks with construction, as well as assuage any potential political or geographic challenges. Considering it was first proposed back in 2020, and given how quickly China can finish massive infrastructure projects, a 13-year gap from initial planning to commercial operation is a testament to the sheer scale of this one. Your classic five-year-plan this is not.

With a timeline like that, the Medog dam won’t immediately be able to offer solutions to China’s existing and ever-growing power needs, if the plan is to use it for domestic power consumption, that is. What it will do is buoy the local area with a limited economic boost to investment through its construction. China’s reassurances on all fronts, to the Tibetans, to the Indians, and to the Bengalis is unlikely to allay regional concerns over the impact this dam will have on their communities, landscape, and wildlife, especially because of China’s dam-building track record in South Asia.

It will likely be another thing to ratchet up the tension in the ever-expanding feud between India and China too, and whilst there’s a lot of time for things to get better in that regard, there’s also a lot of time for things to get significantly worse. Unease could turn into turn as water becomes scarcer, with disastrous consequences for millions of people.

It is highly unlikely that India would be able to deter the Chinese from building the dam because of the strained relations between both countries, it would be taking away a tool that Beijing can use to hurt a country that is directly opposing its control for South Asia, why would they turn that down? There will be a resumption in talks around bilateral water rights and hydro-politics, with the last talks being in 2019 prior to clashes between the nations in Galwan. There is the potential for the relationship to be reset on this front, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Bangladesh will be forced to move even more carefully than India, it’s relationship between China and India is complicated, and it doesn’t have the power or capital to reasonably change either nation’s mind. Sandwiched between superpowers, and likely unable to appease both at the same time, the underdeveloped nation’s position is unenviable to say the least.

And the final thing to think about is the future, especially in regards to our changing planet. The Tibetan Plateau is often referred to as the “third Pole” due to the sheer amount of ice in its high-altitude glacial permafrost, but this too is under threat. The Tibetan Plateau is warming at twice the global average rate, resulting in the rapid melting of these glaciers. This could cause a cascading disaster.

As the ancient ice melts, methane trapped within it is released into the atmosphere, spurring on further warming in a vicious cycle. But it’s not just about the loss of these glaciers. That melting ice will destabilise seasonal river flows, increase sedimentation in dam reservoirs, and cause greater natural disasters through things like landslides.

Environmentalist and geological expert, Fan Xiao put it best when they said: “In view of the immense negative impact on the ecological and social environments in the Yarlung Tsangpo Great Bend, and the southeastern Tibetan region, it becomes clear that pursuing hydropower development in this area may not be worth the cost.”

But I’m not sure Beijing are going to listen. All we can say about that… is damn.

Key Takeaways

• China is constructing the world’s largest dam in Tibet, aiming to generate 60 gigawatts of power.
• The Medog dam’s location in a seismically active region poses significant risks, including earthquakes and landslides.
• The dam’s strategic placement near the Indian border raises geopolitical concerns, particularly for India and Bangladesh.
• Construction challenges include remote terrain, high altitude, and the need for extensive river diversion tunnels.
• The project is expected to displace local communities and impact unique ecosystems and endangered species.

Sources

• Original MegaProjects video: China Is Building the World’s Largest Dam
• Hero image source by Hiroki Ogawa / openverse, by.

Related Coverage