Just as China has aroused international alarm by wielding its virtual rare-earths monopoly as a trade instrument and by thwarting efforts to resolve territorial disputes with its neighbors, it is raising deep concern over the manner it is seeking to fashion water into a political weapon against its co-riparian states.
China, the geographical hub of Asia, is the source of transboundary river flows to the largest number of countries in the world — from Russia to India, and from Kazakhstan to the Indochina Peninsula. This unique status is rooted in its forcible absorption of sprawling ethnic-minority homelands, which make up 60 percent of its landmass and are the origin of all the important international rivers flowing out of Chinese-held territory.
Getting this riparian power to accept water-sharing arrangements or other cooperative institutional mechanisms has proven unsuccessful so far in any basin. As epitomized by its construction of upstream dams on several major international rivers, including the Irtysh-Illy, Amur, Mekong, Salween, Brahmaputra, Arun, Indus, and Sutlej, China is increasingly headed in the opposite direction — toward unilateralist actions impervious to the concerns of downstream nations.