TIL Desk/World/Beijing-Refuting reports of China joining water wars between India and Pakistan by blocking a tributary of Brahmaputra river, Chinese official media said today that Beijing is ready to join a multilateral cooperation mechanism with India and Bangladesh to share the waters.
Relations between China and India should not be affected by “imaginary water war”, an article said, adding that Beijing is unlikely to use Brahmaputra river water as a potential weapon. The article said China is willing to have multilateral cooperation with India and Bangladesh to share the waters. The proposal is significant as China has no water treaty with India to share the river waters.
“It is easy to understand the anger of Indian people as they read recent news reports saying China had blocked a tributary of the Brahmaputra river, which is a trans-boundary river flowing from Southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region into the northeastern Indian state of Assam and later into Bangladesh, serving as an important water source for the regions,” it said.
“The move by China to temporarily blockade the tributary to construct a dam sparked widespread concerns in India, but people in the downstream country may be ignoring one thing,” it said, adding that the reservoir capacity of the dam on the Xiabuqu river, a tributary of the Brahmaputra, is less than 0.02 per cent of the average annual runoff of the Brahmaputra.
