Industry News & Insights

China’s planned mega-dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo, the world’s highest-altitude major river known downstream as the Brahmaputra, is far more than a single monumental structure. Newly revealed details show that it is an enormous, tunnel-connected hydropower and water-control system stretching roughly 150 kilometers through the Himalayas.

The project would fundamentally alter an international river that originates in water-rich Tibet, converting it into a powerful tool of state leverage before it ever reaches downstream nations.

For years, the dam was described as one colossal piece of infrastructure. That understanding is now outdated. What China is building near Tibet’s border with India is a sprawling underground complex designed to give Beijing decisive control over the river at its most strategic point.

A chain of barrages, reservoirs, and power stations, linked by massive tunnels bored through the world’s highest mountains, will operate as a single integrated hydropower system of unprecedented scale.

It remains uncertain whether some of the captured water will be redirected into China’s South–North Water Diversion Project. While the eastern and central routes are already moving water from southern China to the arid north, the proposed western route would draw from rivers originating in Tibet that support hundreds of millions of people across South and Southeast Asia.

The new construction is concentrated near the Great Bend of the Brahmaputra, where the river makes a dramatic turn around a Himalayan peak before descending toward India. Over just 30 miles, the river plunges about 6,500 feet, making it one of the steepest drops of any major river on the planet.

Rather than relying on a single dam wall, China intends to exploit this immense gradient by diverting the river through multiple tunnels, some extending more than 12 miles, to supply a series of five power stations. Together, these facilities are projected to generate more than 60 gigawatts of electricity, nearly three times the capacity of the Three Gorges Dam.

This design dramatically changes the risk profile for downstream countries. Beijing has characterized the project as a run-of-the-river system, implying minimal storage and limited control. However, the extensive tunneling and interconnected reservoirs undermine that claim. Even without large surface reservoirs, the capacity to divert, delay, or suddenly release vast volumes of water through underground channels gives China effective command over the river just before it exits Tibet, which China absorbed in 1951.

By securing Tibet, China gained control over the headwaters of much of Asia. The Tibetan Plateau feeds ten major river systems that together sustain nearly one-fifth of the global population. Since the 1990s, China’s aggressive dam construction and resource exploitation across the plateau have increased risks to regional water security, ecosystems, and political stability. Control over upstream rivers provides immense strategic leverage, turning water into a potential instrument of pressure and conflict.

This danger is most clearly embodied in the Brahmaputra mega-system, which officially entered construction in 2025, though evidence suggests preparatory work began years earlier. Strategically, the project functions as a hydrological weapon, capable of damaging fragile ecosystems while granting China unprecedented influence over South Asia, particularly India.

The undertaking also carries major seismic risks. The site lies in one of the world’s most active earthquake zones, where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates collide.

Geologists warn of reservoir-induced seismicity, in which the immense weight of stored water can increase stress along fault lines. Even if the likelihood of a major quake is uncertain, a partial structural failure triggered by an earthquake or landslide could unleash a massive flood toward India’s densely populated Assam Valley, causing catastrophic loss of life and infrastructure damage.

What makes this project especially destabilizing is not only its size but its secrecy. China has disclosed virtually no technical details, including design specifications or storage capacity. Construction has proceeded without transparent environmental impact assessments and without consultation with downstream countries that would bear the greatest consequences.

The global response has been notably restrained. Governments that closely examine Chinese investments in ports, telecommunications, and supply chains have largely treated this development as a regional issue rather than an international one. That perspective is misguided. Water scarcity is a known driver of conflict, displacement, and state instability. A project with the potential to disrupt ecosystems and affect tens of millions downstream has implications that extend well beyond Asia.

China’s Brahmaputra mega-system should therefore be recognized as what it truly represents: an unprecedented fusion of extreme engineering, ecological transformation, and geopolitical power. Its effects will not stop at the Himalayas, but will ripple far beyond them.