China to dam world's highest river

Beijing has admitted to New Delhi that the mainland is building a dam on the Yarlung Zangbo River near its disputed border with India.

The river originates in Tibet and flows into India as the Brahmaputra - a major waterway on which millions of people depend. Chinese officials told visiting Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna in a closed-door meeting this month a hydropower project was being built at Zangmu in the Tibet Autonomous Region's Shannan prefecture, the Times of India reported.

Mainland experts involved in the project confirmed the hydropower plan for the river yesterday and said four other, similar dams would be built in a deep valley between Sangri and Jiacha counties. The total power capacity of the dams, once completed, would be 'several times' bigger than the massive Three Gorges Dam.

Electricity generated from the hydropower plant at Zangmu will be sold to South and Southeast Asian countries such as Myanmar, Thailand, Bangladesh, Laos and Cambodia. The money raised will then be used to fund the other dams, according to a preliminary report by mainland experts.

Eventually, the dams will generate power to meet the fast growing demand in Guangdong and Hong Kong. Guangdong, the country's primary manufacturing base, now relies heavily on Yunnan and Guangxi for power. But the two western provinces are undergoing rapid industrialisation, increasing their own use of electricity, and the country needs to look further west to build more generating capacity.

'The ultimate goal for the Yarlung Zangbo project is to supply electricity to Guangdong and Hong Kong. The peak season for electricity usage in these regions falls exactly on the flooding season for the Yarlung Zangbo. It will be an ideal match,' the report says.