An Indian Army truck drives along a road to Tawang, near the Line of Actual Control, neighbouring China, in India's Arunachal Pradesh state, where New Delhi plans to build a dam to counter Beijing's project in Tibet.MONEY SHARMA/AFP/Getty Images
On either side of a hotly contested border in the Himalayas, two giant dams are being planned that could reshape the region’s geography, ecology and geopolitics.
In Tibet, China is barrelling ahead with plans to build the world’s largest hydropower plant on the Yarlung River. This has revived a long-standing desire by India to construct a dam lower down the river on its side of the disputed frontier, in the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, where the waterway is known as the Siang.
Both countries have framed their respective projects in terms of modernizing and lifting up remote Himalayan communities, and fulfilling national energy and climate goals.
But the dams have faced resistance and protests, particularly in India, where dissent is more possible than in tightly controlled Tibet, and critics say they are more about geopolitical posturing than hydropower.
“Establishing infrastructure on the ground gives both countries a level of legitimacy over the claimed territory. It holds a lot of national symbolism,” said Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman, a visiting associate fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies in New Delhi.
“It’s political posturing, they are positioning against each other and these hydropower dams have a bordering effect.”
Hydropower dams can generate vast amounts of energy, but doing so requires reshaping the natural flow of rivers, flooding areas near the dam and potentially affecting water security downstream. The Himalayas are also regularly hit by earthquakes, and concerns have been raised about how the dams could be vulnerable to seismic activity, setting the stage for a future disaster.
China claims all of Arunachal Pradesh, and in 1962 fought a war with India over the region. Tensions still flare occasionally, and soldiers from both sides − who generally do not carry guns to avoid sparking another all-out conflict − have at times crossed the Line of Actual Control (LAC), as the de facto border is known, and fought each other hand to hand.
Despite continuing talks with India aimed at easing border tensions, last month China released a new list of “standard” names for dozens of places in the contested region, many of them controlled by India, in what New Delhi said was a “vain and preposterous” move.
“Creative naming will not alter the undeniable reality that Arunachal Pradesh was, is, and will always remain an integral and inalienable part of India,” the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.
The dam being constructed in Tibet is expected to provide three times the amount of hydropower as China's Three Gorges Dam, currently the world’s largest.STR/AFP/Getty Images
In recent years, Beijing has also built strategic villages all along its side of the disputed boundary, and along a similarly tense border with the Himalayan country of Bhutan, to provide literal concrete support for its sovereignty assertions.
“These villages, often accompanied by military and dual-use infrastructure, are an important ‘grey-zone’ tool enabling China to assert and defend its claims near disputed areas,” researchers Jennifer Jun and Brian Hart wrote in a report published last year by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
While little is known about the massive dam being constructed in Tibet, the Motuo Hydropower Station is expected to further boost population and economic development in the remote region, providing three times the amount of hydropower as the Three Gorges Dam, currently the world’s largest.
Protests are rare in Tibet, where the Chinese state has been accused of widespread human-rights abuses and tight controls on Tibetan language, religion and culture.
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But as researchers Genevieve Donnellon-May and Mark Wang wrote in February, in other parts of China, “locals have been forced to bear significant environmental, socioeconomic, and cultural losses from the construction of major hydropower projects.”
“As a result, such hydro-engineering projects are often portrayed in state media as a sacrifice for the national interest in which local authorities align with central government priorities,” they said.
Resistance has been stronger in India, where the Siang Upper Multipurpose Project (SUMP) has been framed as a national-security-driven counter to China’s plans, as well as a way of meeting energy and climate goals. The dam will also mitigate any potential downstream effects from the Motuo project, Indian officials have said.
Low-level protests have been continuing in Arunachal Pradesh since 2022, and these recently prompted the local government to send in paramilitary troops, to the outrage of many locals.
The Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum, which has spearheaded the protests, has accused Delhi of bypassing environmental and community-impact assessments, and not engaging with locals about their concerns.
In May, the SIFF said it was initiating an “indefinite dharna,” or sit-in protest, at Begging, in central Arunachal Pradesh, demanding that the government withdraw paramilitary forces, and provide assurance that no further activity on the dam will be carried out “without the free, prior and informed consent of the local communities.”
“These projects threaten not only our land and livelihoods but also our identity,” protest leader Takar Megu told local media. “The government must respect the sentiments of the Indigenous people and prioritize sustainable alternatives.”
Representatives of the government of Arunachal Pradesh and India’s national environment and infrastructure ministries did not respond to a request for comment.
Dr. Rahman, of the Institute of Chinese Studies in New Delhi, said that by framing the dam as an issue of national security, Delhi was bypassing requirements to consult local populations and accede to democratic checks on such projects.
“They are not taking into account environmental concerns or local people’s concerns about their livelihood or historical lands,” he said. “In many ways, it is mimicking what China is doing in Tibet.”