Michael Richardson: Power play for China's rivers

There are many ways of looking at China; as a rising military power with the potential to challenge the United States and Japan for primacy in the Asia-Pacific region and play a key role in handling global flashpoints like Iran and North Korea; as an economic dynamo that is grabbing investment and trade share from countries with higher costs but also offering huge sales opportunities to farm and commodities exporters like New Zealand and Australia.

Or it can be seen as a resource-poor developing nation struggling to prevent rapid economic growth from depleting scarce supplies of water, polluting rivers and underground aquifers, and making living conditions unhealthy, if not unbearable, in many areas.

In an effort to show the Communist leadership has not forgotten the problems of ordinary people as it guides China towards an increasingly urbanised, market-oriented future, Premier Wen Jiabao has been touring drought-stricken regions promising to intensify efforts to ease water shortages. Television pictures show the premier chatting with residents in an open-collared shirt, drawing water from a well and looking over barren, dusty fields in the interior region of Ningxia, one of several areas facing crippling drought.

Across China, more than 300 million residents in rural areas are short of clean drinking water. Pollution is so severe the Government estimates 40 per cent of water in the main rivers is fit only for industrial or agricultural use.

With more than 20 per cent of the global population, China has only 7 per cent of the world's water resources. But some rivers are in remote areas and have great potential for power generation and irrigation. Nonetheless, controversy has swirled around a proposal to build a series of hydro-electric dams on the Nu river - one of the last free flowing rivers in China.

Decisions made by Chinese Government authorities on the final shape of the project will affect downstream countries Burma and Thailand. Yet they are shrouded in official secrecy.

In China, the issue is emerging as a test of national priorities. To what extent are party and Government officials prepared to listen to dissenting voices? And how will they balance the need for energy and economic growth against conservation and sustainable development?

Beginning high on the Tibetan plateau, the river Nu, which means "angry", passes through a remote mountain region of southwest China before entering Burma, where it is known as the Thanlwin (in Burmese) or the Salween (in English).

The river forms Burma's border with Thailand for 120km, then flows through Burmese territory before spilling into the Andaman Sea.

More than two thirds of the 2800km river lies in China where a group of state-owned companies announced in mid-2003 that they planned to build 13 dams on the Chinese section of the Nu to generate electricity.

Such a project would be the largest cascade dam system in the world. It would generate 22,000 megawatts, the equivalent of about two dozen big nuclear power stations. This is 4000 more megawatts of electricity a year than the mammoth Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River will generate when it is finished in three years time.

In April 2004, Premier Wen - who has repeatedly expressed concern about the social and environmental consequences of uncontrolled growth - suspended the Nu river cascade project, telling officials it needed more careful scrutiny.

Environmental activists and some Chinese scientists had opposed any dams along the river, arguing that they would displace thousands of villagers, threaten fisheries and wildlife, and disrupt the flow of the Nu into Burma and along the Thai border.

The United Nations has also entered the dispute. Last year, its cultural protection agency, Unesco, issued a statement expressing its "gravest concerns" about the potential damage to a wilderness area in China's Yunnan province through which the Nu flows. China had designated the area a national park and in July 2003 Unesco listed it as world heritage site, noting that the region "may be the most biologically diverse temperate ecosystem in the world".

Latest reports suggest, however, that Chinese authorities have decided to proceed with the Nu hydro power project, initially building only four of the originally slated 13 dams, ostensibly to limit any local disruption and damage to the environment.

Under China's Environmental Impact Assessment Law, which took effect in September 2003, comprehensive reviews are supposed to be made in the planning stages of big public and private development projects. This process is also supposed to involve public participation, including hearings where objections can be raised and considered.

However, China's Ministry of Water Resources, noting that government reports about international rivers are considered confidential, has declared that a section of the environmental impact assessment on the Nu river project is a state secret and forbidden release of the report.

The governments of Burma and Thailand signed a memorandum of understanding in December to build at least five dams on the Salween, with participation of foreign firms including Chinese state-owned companies. The dams would generate 11,800 megawatts. But the memorandum of understanding was only published when a journalist posted it on a website.

China has a strong case for harnessing its rivers. It is short of water and energy and needs to reduce reliance on coal which pollutes the atmosphere and releases gases that are warming the world to dangerous levels.

China's hydropower potential is huge, yet officials say only 20 per cent has been tapped. But keeping its people and neighbouring countries in the dark about its plans will fan the fears about adverse consequences, making it seem that there is much to hide.

* Michael Richardson, a former Asia editor of the International Herald Tribune, is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore.