Reassessing Water Security in the Mekong: The Chinese Rapprochement with Southeast Asia

Abstract

This paper focuses on China's incentive in basin-wide cooperation in the Mekong Basin and argues that understanding the role of three factors—the non-water resources, geography, and climate regimes—is critical to explaining China's cooperative attitude. More specifically, it addresses the overarching question: Under what conditions are the Mekong riparian states able to govern the shared water cooperatively to overcome collective action problems in situations, where the presence of the hegemonic upstream state like China precludes cooperation? The core of the paper offers an integrative approach that connects water resources, non-water resources, geography, and climate types for explaining international riparian politics.

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges the New Research Initiatives in Humanities and Social Sciences of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and the Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST) of the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), for financial support during the fieldwork. My appreciation goes to Dr. Mikiyasu Nakayama, Dr. James Nickum, Dr. Ariel Dinar, Dr. Kenji Otsuka, the fellows of the 2004–2006 “Hydro-politics study group” at the University of Tokyo, and the two anonymous reviewers for this journal, for their valuable comments on earlier drafts. Deficiencies in the final product of course remain the sole responsibility of the author.

Notes

i. Although China originally owned monitoring stations along the Lancang River, it ended up accepting the offer by the MRC (personal communication, 2004). In April 2007, China reconfirmed its further extension for another five years (personal communication, 2007b) and in 2008 China's Ministry of Water Resources and the MRC Member States renewed an existing agreement to share data on flood season water.

ii. Chinese delegations are basically composed of representatives of China to UNESCAP (Bangkok Head of delegation), Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Water Resources, Bureau of Water Resources of Yunnan Province, and Yunnan Navigation Affairs Managing Bureau (MRC, 2004).

iii. Furthermore, China and the MRC then set up the Joint Working Group (JWG), consisting of five experts and officials from both sides to implement this agreement and to continue related works. The first JWG meeting under the agreement took place at Beijing and Kunming in 2002, during which China and the MRC drafted the “Implementation Plan” (signed in the following year, 2003) and China provided the historical hydrological data for the last three years.

iv. In terms of search efficiency, these three search terms were adequate and also avoided unrelated and often-reported issues such as bird flu, drugs, and AIDS in this region.

v. For instance, when China and the Mekong riparian states as well as ASEAN nations agreed and adopted their national plans of water resources development and Mekong development (AFP, 2002a, 2002b, 2002c, November 24, 25), this study coded them as “collaboration”.

vi. For instance, this study coded Agreement on Commercial Navigation on the Lancang-Mekong in 2001 as a “joint action”.

vii. For instance, when China showed disinterest in becoming a formal member of the MRC in 1995 (AFP, 1995 April 5), it coded it as “unilateral”.

viii. The total number of events hit by the search was 365. Forty-six of the 365 events were related to the development of the Mekong River Basin or the region. This article selected the forty-seven events by carefully reading the full-text and excluding these events that were not directly related to the issues this article investigates.

ix. Of course, environmental externalities should be taken into considerations.