Construction of China’s enormous hydropower project began in July this year, when Premier Li Qiang formally launched what is set to become one of the most ambitious infrastructure undertakings in modern history. Planned as a chain of five cascade dams along a steep Himalayan gorge, the complex is projected to generate up to 300 billion kWh of electricity – enough to power more than 300 million people, roughly equivalent to the United Kingdom’s annual consumption. With costs set to exceed one trillion yuan (about $140 billion), the project will surpass the famed Three Gorges Dam in both scale and expense.
This megaproject reflects Beijing’s broader drive to expand its infrastructure capabilities and harness the immense hydropower potential of the Yarlung Tsangpo river. Although formally approved only last year, the project has been under discussion for decades. It first entered public debate in November 2020, when the Communist Party’s Central Committee included it in its 14th Five-Year Plan and 2035 development goals. More than a domestic infrastructure initiative, however, the project embodies China’s wider economic, technological, and geopolitical ambitions – carrying implications that stretch far beyond the Tibetan Plateau.
Details of the Project
The site lies on the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet’s Medog County, just 30 kilometers from the contested border with India and near the river’s “Great Bend” – a dramatic, U-shaped turn near Namcha Barwa Peak. Here, the river, which generally flows eastward across the Tibetan Plateau, suddenly turns southward around Namcha Barwa and plunges through steep canyons toward India’s Arunachal Pradesh state.
The Yarlung Tsangpo rises on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, flows through Tibet, and enters India as the Siang. Further downstream, it becomes the Brahmaputra in Assam and the Jamuna in Bangladesh before emptying into the Bay of Bengal. Along this journey, the river sustains roughly 130 million people, supplies nearly one-third of India’s freshwater resources and 40 percent of its hydropower potential, and in Bangladesh provides 55 percent of irrigation needs while supporting fisheries that sustain two million fishermen. For India, the river is essential for both water and energy security, while for China, it plays a more limited national role but remains significant for Tibet’s agricultural and energy industries.
Medog is the final county before the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between China and India. This remote site – sandwiched between mountains and plunging nearly 2,000 kilometers over a 50-kilometre stretch – offers ideal conditions for hydropower generation. Estimates suggest that it could create nearly 70 million kilowatts of technically exploitable energy.
Beyond its engineering ambition, the project’s scale and location suggest strategic motivations that reach far beyond energy generation. Situated near the disputed Sino-Indian border, the dam complex sits at the intersection of China’s pursuit of energy security, frontier development, and territorial consolidation. It also underscores Beijing’s growing use of infrastructure as a geopolitical instrument – both to assert control over Tibet’s vast natural resources and to strengthen its strategic posture in the wider Himalayan region. This raises critical questions: is the hydropower project primarily a domestic development initiative aimed at decarbonization and regional growth, or does it mark a new phase in China’s Himalayan power play, where water, technology, and geopolitics converge?
Domestic Drivers: Energy Insecurity and Grid Instability
China’s push to build the Yarlung Tsangpo hydropower project reflects a convergence of economic, energy, and technological priorities. Beyond stimulating the slowing national economy and promoting local socioeconomic development in Tibet, Beijing views large-scale hydropower as essential to its low-carbon transition and long-term growth.
China possesses the world’s largest hydropower potential – around 676 million kilowatts – yet Tibet’s share (roughly 30 percent) remains largely untapped. Installed capacity in the region stands at barely one percent of technically exploitable potential. The Yarlung Tsangpo alone could generate nearly 80 million kilowatts due to its steep gradient and high flow, making it central to national plans to peak carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, alongside 2025 targets to reduce carbon intensity by 18 percent and energy intensity by 13.5 percent. Harnessing Tibet’s hydropower is therefore critical to achieving China’s low-carbon goals, reinforcing the region’s role in the broader renewable energy agenda.
Energy security concerns further drive the project. Rolling blackouts in 2020-21 exposed risks from overreliance on coal and intermittent renewables, prompting a dual strategy: approving new coal-fired power plants to stabilize the grid while accelerating hydropower development, particularly in Tibet. Coal still supplies over half of China’s energy consumption, but steady, renewable baseload power from projects like Yarlung Tsangpo is vital for meeting emissions targets without compromising reliability.
China’s Technological and Industrial Ambitions
Technological and industrial ambitions add another layer. China’s rapidly expanding artificial intelligence sector and nationwide 5G rollout require vast, constant electricity. By 2025, computing infrastructure alone is projected to consume around 360 billion kWh, with 5G base stations adding another 140 billion kWh. With the country struggling to meet power demand at various times, companies operating data centers have tougher energy quotas in response. Hydropower provides stable, low-carbon energy to support large-scale AI training, cloud computing, and advanced manufacturing, giving China a strategic edge in the US-China technology race.
The project also supports the country’s Eastern Data, Western Computing (西电东送) initiative. Fully launched in 2022, this is a national program aimed at optimizing the allocation of China’s computing power resources and building a new computing network system. As part of this, tech companies are encouraged to site data centers in China’s renewable and hydro resource-rich western regions with cooler climates, thereby easing the burden on coastal power grids in the east while also supporting the development of green data centers.
Tibet’s own development plans echo this goal. Regional five-year strategies envision hydropower and clean energy bases as key local industries, and partnerships with major state-owned firms – including China Huaneng Group, PowerChina, and the China Three Gorges Corporation – have already been signed. Local authorities project annual revenues of roughly 20 billion yuan ($2.7 billion) from hydroelectricity exports to energy-stressed provinces and potentially Southeast Asia, positioning hydropower as both a growth engine and a tool to reduce Tibet’s economic gap with the rest of China.
Challenges and Implications
The Yarlung Tsangpo mega-dam faces obstacles spanning engineering, social, and geopolitical domains. Extreme topography, high-altitude construction, seismic risks, and severe weather complicate engineering, while logistical hurdles in transporting materials further challenge implementation.
Domestically, the project forms part of a broader hydropower expansion in Tibet. Since 2000, China has built or authorized nearly 200 hydropower installations in the region, most of which are classified as major or massive. Many remain in planning or preliminary stages, yet if realized, they could displace more than 1.2 million residents and impact countless sacred sites. Notably, in February 2024, Tibetan residents of Kamtok – near the Tibet-Sichuan border – protested against the Gangtuo dam, highlighting local opposition to large-scale hydropower projects. While no protests have yet been reported regarding the Yarlung Tsangpo project, similar unrest remains possible if affected communities are excluded from decision-making.
Downstream, India maintains a mixture of ecological and geopolitical concerns. Despite Beijing’s assurances that the project’s “run-of-the-river” design – that is, a hydropower system that generates electricity by using the natural flow and elevation drop of a river without relying on large reservoirs or extensive water storage – poses minimal risks, India remains cautious. It has announced plans for a 10-12 GW hydroelectric dam in Arunachal Pradesh as a countermeasure, while the Ministry of External Affairs raised the issue with Beijing earlier this year. Although China controls roughly 50 percent of the Brahmaputra basin, its contribution to total river discharge is estimated between 7 and 30 percent, with gauging stations showing only about six percent reaching India. High rainfall and Indian tributaries further dilute upstream regulation, and Assam’s Chief Minister has also noted that the river’s principal sources lie in Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh. Nonetheless, limited Chinese data sharing sustains mistrust, and existing bilateral mechanisms – including the 2002 flood-season hydrological MoU and the Expert Level Mechanism – remain fragmented and vulnerable to broader geopolitical tensions, as demonstrated during the 2017 Doklam standoff when Beijing withheld hydrological data.
Looking Ahead
The Yarlung Tsangpo mega-dam exemplifies the complex interplay between engineering ambition, domestic development, and regional geopolitics. Technically, it represents one of the most challenging hydropower projects in history, demanding innovative solutions for high-altitude construction, seismic risks, and extreme weather. Domestically, it advances China’s low-carbon energy agenda, expands Tibet’s economic and technological integration, and contributes to national energy security. Yet the social and environmental costs – including potential displacement of residents, impacts on sacred sites, and local opposition – remain significant. Downstream, while the hydrological effect on India may be limited, restricted data sharing and fragmented cooperation mechanisms sustain mistrust, illustrating how large-scale infrastructure projects can exacerbate existing geopolitical tensions.
Internationally, the project’s significance extends far beyond South Asia. By demonstrating China’s engineering and technological capabilities, it strengthens Beijing’s influence in global renewable energy supply chains, digital infrastructure, and international partnerships. As such, the Yarlung Tsangpo project is not merely a domestic energy initiative; it is a strategic instrument with implications that span regional development, international diplomacy, and global technological competition.
Written by
Genevieve Donnellon-May
GenevieveDonnGenevieve Donnellon-May is a Research Fellow at the Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies (YCAPS) and a non-resident Vasey Fellow at the Pacific Forum. She is also a Researcher at Oxford Global Society and a Fellow at the Indo-Pacific Studies Center. She sits on the advisory board of Modern Diplomacy and is a Pacific Forum Young Leader. She holds a Masters of Science degree from the University of Oxford and Bachelor of Arts (Hons) from the University of Melbourne.
