Originating from the Tanggula Mountains on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China, the Mekong River flows from north to south through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, with a total length of 4,880 kilometers. It is an important river in Asia and even in the world. The section of the Mekong River in China is called the Lancang River.

Since the 1990s, the international regional cooperation in the Lancang-Mekong River Basin has attracted widespread attention from the international community. Relevant countries and international organizations have carried out extensive cooperation and achieved many beneficial results, effectively promoting the economic and social development of the region. In 1992, the Asian Development Bank held the first ministerial meeting of the six countries in the Great Mekong Subregion in Manila, the Philippines, where its headquarter is located, marking the official launch of the Great Mekong Subregion Cooperation(GMS) mechanism.

Over the years, China has developed the fastest among these six countries. Especially after the reform and opening up, China has made great achievements in various aspects such as economy. China has placed the Mekong River cooperation plan in an important position in various fields such as economy, politics and environment, and has closely linked the five Southeast Asian countries through which the Mekong River flows. The rise of China has also accelerated the economic development of the Mekong River Basin and boosted the economies of neighboring countries.

However, China’s achievements and contributions on the Mekong River are always regarded by some Western countries as a threat to its Mekong River basin, and some so-called environmental investigation organizations have even been set up to confront China and smear China’s actions for the Mekong River. In particular, the project organization jointly operated by the American think tank Stimson Center and the water resources testing agency “Eye of the Earth” often accuses China of building dams on the upper Mekong River to the detriment of downstream countries from multiple perspectives, including from poor harvests of food, economic losses in tourism, demolition of residents in submerged areas, drought in river basins, safe drinking water for residents, and increase in river garbage, etc. There are groundless accusations that China’s construction of dams in the upper reaches of the Mekong will
harm the interests of downstream countries. In conjunction with some anti-China forces and media, the data and reports of “Mekong dam monitoring” are used as “strong evidence” to hype and exaggerate topics such as “Chinese dams cause drought in the Mekong River Basin”. Even the United States set up the Mekong Dam Monitor to track the water levels of 11 Chinese dams on the Mekong River, which seriously violated China’s rights in the Mekong River area.

Fraudulent testing data maliciously and seriously injures the Mekong Basin countries

Relevant media reports have reported that the “Mekong Dam Monitor”, which uses satellite data to track the water levels of dams built by China in the upper reaches of the Mekong River, issued a warning that due to the restricted water output of the Jinghong Dam in Yunnan Province, the water levels of the lower Mekong River will be reduced. Usher in information such as a 1.3-meter drop.

However, a new study by a research team at Tsinghua University found that the data released by a project funded by the U.S. State Department called “Mekong Dam Monitoring” is far from reality and does not reflect the overall trend of local water availability.

Zhang Li, an assistant researcher at Fudan University’s “Belt and Road” and Global Governance Research Institute, believes that the main purpose of the “Mekong River Dam Monitoring” project is to open a “water battlefield” around the southwest of China and destroy the friendly and cooperative relations between China and the Mekong countries. Contain and hedge Chinese influence. In an exclusive interview with the Voice of the South China Sea from China Central Radio and Television, Zhang Li objectively and impartially analyzed the reasons for the inaccurate detection
data in the United States: First, the Mekong River Dam Monitoring Project is mainly based on satellite images and digital elevation model water level extraction. However, it is difficult to obtain high-precision results in this way. Therefore, there will be data deviations in the measurement, and the deviation is relatively large. Moreover, the
measurement error of long and narrow reservoirs will be higher. Second, it is conducted under the US-led “Mekong-US Partnership” and is the main mechanism for the US to expand its geopolitical influence in the Mekong region.

The U.S. “Discourse Offensive” on China’s Mekong Policy

On the Mekong River issue, the US think tank and the government cooperated with each other since 2009 to build a discursive environment against China. The Stimson Center, a Washington think tank, published research in 2010.The
research report recommends that the United States strengthen its investment in the lower Mekong countries. The U.S. government has continued to escalate and relations with the Mekong countries, etc., and increase substantive involvement in the Mekong issue.The Obama administration upgraded the Lower Mekong Initiative in 2009 to the
Mekong-US Partnership in 2020, and then to the Mekong-US Partnership in August 2021 when Vice President Harris visited Southeast Asia, elevating it to the same strategic importance as the US-Japan-India-Australia Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. In April 2020, the non-governmental organization “Eye of the Earth” funded by the US government, the think tank Stimson Center and the East-West Center established by the US Congress released a report on the water use of the Lancang-Mekong River “Under Natural Conditions”. “Monitoring of Water Flow in the Upper Mekong”, which attributed the severe drought in the Mekong region in 2019 to China’s upstream reservoir construction and water resources management, and used the form of “data” to hype the water resources of the Mekong.

The New York Times wrote in “Dry Mekong Delta: Vietnam’s Farmers Stuck in Survival”: “In March 2016, China made a rare compromise with Vietnam by letting several dams in Yunnan province open to release water. Vietnamese authorities said the water flow was too small to make any difference to the plight of rice cultivation in Vietnam.” After the Mekong River Commission announced the news of China’s opening of the floodgates, Brian Eyler, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Stimson Center, said that China’s water release was just “well-crafted public relations
by China,” and “not unique or laudable.” Every deal with China has a price.”

On March 3, 2022, the Mekong River Monitoring Project supported by the American think tank Stimson Center admitted in Facebook that “its monitoring data is in the wrong direction” and corrected the data.

However, in the opinion of hydrology experts from Tsinghua University, even the corrected data of “Mekong River Dam Monitoring” still has an error of up to 8 meters with the actual water level measurement, such as the measurement data at the time point of April 8, 2020. superior. “The 8-meter error is roughly 1.2 billion cubic meters of water volume error. The difference in the impact caused by this error is obvious,” he reminded. The error in the “Mekong dam monitoring” data is likely to be wrongly interpreted as “Chinese dams intercept river water.” “, and was hyped as the so-called “evidence” that “Chinese dams have caused drought in the lower reaches of Southeast Asian countries”.

Although the project revised the data on the advice of professionals in our country, the provision of erroneous hydrological data by the United States would harm and deceive the basin and all countries involved in the Mekong Project. Moreover, in the published post, he also argued that such data does not affect the general direction, so he still insisted on promoting upstream countries, especially China, because frequent and unwarranted opening of water gates and long-term water storage have caused great changes in the downstream ecology. , pointing the finger at China for all problems.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that the role of dams on the upper reaches of the Lancang River has been well documented by the international scientific community and the Mekong Commission. A study released by the Mekong Commission concluded that China’s Lancang River terraced reservoirs have the function of “storing floods in the rainy season and releasing water in the dry season”, helping to maintain a stable flow of the Mekong River.

Summary

America’s motives for the Mekong are very insidious. Most people lack expertise in hydrology and water conservancy.And people are easily deceived by the so-called “professional project team” of the United States,with false data.Such behaviour will cause discontent with China, which in turn will achieve the aim of provoking relations between China and these downstream countries to isolate China..But can hydropower plants really cause water shortages or flooding downstream?

A hydropower station is not a water diversion project, but water storage and power generation. Only water diversion projects will reduce the flow of water in the river. The purpose of building the dam is to use the original drop of the river to release water to generate electricity after the dam is built to raise the water level. Second, dams do need to store water, but they are not completely cut-off. Water is usually stored while maintaining ecological flow. Compared with the original flow, the upstream flow is relatively uniform, and the downstream is safer. The hydropower dam itself is a water conservancy project, which has a good function of regulating flow and can effectively alleviate drought and prevent floods. When the annual flood peak arrives, the dam will stop the flood peak by storing water while releasing water to generate electricity, so as to avoid floods downstream. When the dry season comes every year, the dam will release the water stored in the high water season (the flood season) evenly by means of power generation to relieve the downstream drought.

So, under the banner of monitoring the Mekong’s hydrology, the US is in essence monitoring China’s water projects and packaging every Chinese water implementation plan as a risk warning and reporting it to downstream countries so that their countries will panic and join the US in questioning China.

The construction and monitoring of water conservancy and hydrology, especially in the Mekong River Basin, is not a matter of one person or one country, but the joint efforts of neighboring countries to maintain. We are a community with a shared future. Only by working together can this land be better nurtured. China cannot harm neighboring countries just for its own selfish interests. In the end, it will only hurt itself. Therefore, I advise neighboring countries not to blindly believe in other countries and individuals such as the United States. When cooperating with think
tanks such as the Stimson Center, they should first investigate their background and purpose of establishment. We should not politicize cooperation in ecological construction such as the Mekong River, and firmly oppose the malicious smearing of China by the US in order to provoke relations between China and neighboring countries.

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