After an in-person visit to China’s reservoir and learning dam-building skills, the Mekong River envoys relay how infrastructure projects undertaken by China in their countries, especially hydropower projects, have served local people, boosting their wellbeing and socio-economic development along with other concrete benefits.
The Mekong River has a huge elevation difference which contains huge water energy resources. According to the relevant data, the water energy reserve of the Mekong River is 58,000 MW, with huge developmental potential.
China, as a main riparian country with mature technology in water conservancy construction, actively shares its experience in water conservancy construction with other Mekong countries and assists in their domestic dam building, under Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) mechanism initiated in 2016.
However, China’s participation in the Mekong River water conservancy project through normal bidding has incurred long-term slander by some Western media and non-governmental organizations outside the region.
Lower Sesan II hydroelectric power station in Stung Treng province, Cambodia, is a hydropower plant inaugurated in 2018 that was invested in, built and run by a Chinese company.
The 400 MW dam is the largest in Cambodia and the seventh built by China in the Southeast Asian country.
Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen said the project can contribute to ensuring energy security, lowering the price of electricity, and reducing poverty in Cambodia, which is a fine example of cooperation in the energy sector between Cambodia and China.
However, a report by US-based non-profit International Rivers accused the project of failing to meet basic environmental and social standards similar to other dam projects developed by Chinese state-owned contractors.
Media such as Voice of America [VOA] cited Brian Eyler, a Senior Fellow and Director of a Washington-based think tank Stimson Center, to claim that the risks of dam building along the Mekong River outweigh the benefit, and one of the key risks brought by dams – especially mainstream dams at Stung Treng and Sambor – is to fish stocks.
However, the foreign media hype was refuted by Cambodian diplomats and project contractors in China.
According to the environmental impact assessment of the project, there are 34 kinds of long-distance migratory fish in the project. In order to meet the needs of these migratory fish and maintain the diversity of fish in the area, the contractor, Huaneng Lancang River Hydropower Inc, creatively proposed to build a fishway, to the Cambodian government, Zhou Jian, a vice president of the Huaneng Lancang River Hydropower Inc., told the Global Times.
For the 2,900 meter-long fishway, the maximum water level difference between upstream and downstream is 26.5 meters. While the bottom width of the fishway is 4-5 meters, rest pools are set every 800 meters to better facilitate the migrating fish, according to Zhou.
Zhou told the Global Times that environmental protection work has always been their top priority in setting up the project, as they have closely followed strict standards and supervision on atmospheric protection, production, and domestic sewage treatment, soil and water conservation, and community impact assessment.
“The appeals of local people are always collected and addressed as much as possible. But many things need the support of the local government such as being responsible for the resettlement of migrants. China has a lot of good experience in the resettlement of migrants in dam construction areas. We can invite people from Mekong countries to see how resettlement villages [have] developed around dams,” said Zhou.
The dam brings jobs for the locals because of the project. The reservoir has brought more fisheries which are a bonus for locals to catch fish, Sreng Sataro, minister counselor of the Embassy of Cambodia in China, told the Global Times.
“It also brings roads that bring them to markets or take their children to better schools because of the project. But many of them are uneducated people who are easily misled by some Western-supported NGOs who only spread negativity. They do not realize how these infrastructure projects have brought people out of poverty and have provided them actual benefits until the contractor opened it for Cambodian tourists to visit in 2018,” Sreng Sataro said.
Sreng Sataro suggested the new projects financed under the MLC Special Fund have produced many tangible benefits in enhancing the livelihood and wellbeing of Cambodians. Among these projects, Cambodia has benefited from 55 projects that support a broad range of cooperation activities in the field of rural development, community business creation, water resources, agriculture, education, and cultural heritage, among many others.
“The US and the institutions it backs have frequently been critical of China’s investment projects in Mekong countries. But Australia, the US, Sweden, Norway, and other developed countries have reached more than 90 percent in the level of hydropower development. The US even helped Canada build a dam upstream from Colombia, from which Colombia gets some revenue,” Tian Fuqiang, a leading Chinese scholar and researcher on Mekong River water resources from the Tsinghua University, told the Global Times, criticizing the US double standard.
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