Defending its plan to construct the world's largest dam on the Brahmaputra River in Tibet, China on Friday said that the project will not affect the riparian states, adding that safety issues have been addressed through studies spanning decades. In what can be termed as an attempt to play down the apprehensions surrounding the project, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning claimed that China has always been responsible for the development of cross-border rivers.
She added that hydropower development in Tibet has been studied in an in-depth way for decades and safeguard measures have been taken for the security of the project and ecological and environmental protection.
She also said that China will continue to maintain communication with countries in the lower reaches through existing channels and step up international cooperation on disaster prevention and relief for the benefit of the people by the river, she said.
China approves dam constuction over Brahmaputra River
Earlier on Wednesday, China gave a go-ahead to the construction of the world's largest dam on the Brahmaputra River in Tibet close to the Indian border. The hydropower project is to be built in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River, the Tibetan name for the Brahmaputra, an official statement here said.
The dam is to be built at a huge gorge in the Himalayan reaches where the Brahmaputra River makes a huge U-turn to flow into Arunachal Pradesh and then to Bangladesh.
Dam will speed up development of clean energy: China
Mao said China’s hydropower development in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River aims to speed up the development of clean energy and respond to climate change and extreme hydrological disasters.
The total investment in the dam could exceed one trillion yuan (USD 137 billion), which would dwarf any other single infrastructure project on the planet including China's own Three Gorges Dam, regarded as the largest in the world, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported on Thursday.
(With agency inputs)
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