Recently, water levels in the lower Mekong River have dropped significantly, causing drought in riparian countries. Four Mekong River Commission members – Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam – issued a statement last week saying they want the Chinese Communist Party to release water from upstream reservoirs to allow the lower reaches to return to normal, and asked the Communist Party to open up big data on water resources and share plans to release water to help the lower Mekong countries manage the risks.
The Chinese government has built 11 hydropower stations in the upper Mekong River, known as the Lancang River in China, to block water and generate electricity. The Mekong River Commission said large upstream reservoirs store large amounts of river water, causing water levels to rise and fall downstream, affecting fish migration, agriculture and transportation, and threatening the livelihoods and Food security of nearly 70 million people. The statement noted that the discharge from the Jinghong dam in Yunnan province downstream was about 785 cubic meters per second in early January and rose to 1,400 cubic meters per second in mid-January. However, the discharge dropped again in February, and as of last Thursday, it was only 800 cubic meters per second.
Dr. Wang Weiluo, a renowned water expert living in Germany, said that the low water level in the lower Mekong River is not a problem for the Chinese Communist Party, and it will not reason with you. The Mekong River flows through five countries, and Vietnam is tougher on the CCP. Cambodia and Laos are pro-communist and have a softer stance toward the CCP, turning them into almost communist Chinese territory. The Mekong River Commission, although established early, has since been very much divided by the CCP. In particular, the Mekong River Commission is an NGO, and the CCP does not take NGOs seriously at all.
Wang Weiluo said: “In the natural state, that is, when China did not build a dam upstream, the most depleted water flow in the lower Mekong River during the dry season was 1,100 cubic meters per second, which means that it was a little bit more than the water that China is releasing now, and China has, that is, put it below the limit. That is to say, you are creating a flow that is drier than the natural drought. But China is never it does not care about this stuff. Because the point is, the point is that the five ASEAN countries rely on two flows in the Mekong River, one from China upstream and one from their local rainwater. The local rainfall they are now in the dry season, the dry season, the local rain until almost April, it will have rain. So this Time they will not have rain. Then he just relies on the upstream is the water from China.”
Wang Weiluo said that the Chinese Communist Party plans to build more than 20 hydropower stations in the upper reaches of the Mekong River, the Lancang River, and eight of them are in the area where the Tibetans used to live, along the Hengduan Mountains, which are now allocated to Yunnan. Further upstream are several in the Tibet Autonomous Region, which have just begun to be built, and have not yet been completed.
Wang recalled that many years ago, when the lower Mekong River was in drought, countries in the lower Mekong River asked China to release water, but China did not do so, and Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the dams would not affect the flow of water in the Mekong River. Around 2016, Vietnam’s foreign ministry asked China to release water, and the release was intentionally planned by China.
Then the second time was when the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry asked China to release water,” Wang said. In that year, China put the amount of water released in the dry season to more than 3,000 cubic meters per second, which is three to four times as large as it is now. This is equivalent to the average flow of water exported from the Lancang River. And that time is why the release, because Li Keqiang will soon attend the ASEAN Summit, before that release. This year he is not released again!”
Wang Weiluo said, because between China and the Mekong countries, there is no agreement on what time the water must be released. This way, countries always have to beg it, and the Chinese Communist government’s face likes nothing better than people begging it. The Chinese Communist Party ignorantly treats the amount of water to be released as something within its sovereignty. According to international contracts, this is not how it is interpreted. The water release plan is supposed to be made jointly by the upstream and downstream countries.
Wang Weiluo said: “There is a big problem between China and the Mekong River, because China always treats the amount of water it releases as something within its own sovereignty. This is my water, I am willing to release how much water is my water, he does not know that is according to the international contract is not so to interpret. The water in this river is like he said, that is, the upstream and downstream countries should work together to develop this release plan. It is not a matter for China alone, but for the whole river basin, that is, the river should be considered as a unit.”
Wang Weiluo also said that there are many people in the lower Mekong River who make their living by fishing. If the water level is too low, there will be no fish in the river. And their philosophy of Life is different from mainland China, they are not a market economy of such ideas. For example, if they fish, they will stop fishing when they have enough to eat for the day. Unlike mainland China, I will give you as many fish as there are in the river. So their people’s daily source of livelihood is this river. Without this river, they would have no livelihood.
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