News

China’s upstream activities along the Mekong River have long been contentious — but a recent study has sparked fresh scrutiny over its dam-building exercises, reigniting warnings that millions of livelihoods could be destroyed. A U.S.-government funded study by research and consulting firm, Eyes on Earth, found that Chinese dams ...

Southeast Asian countries would have likely experienced a much less severe drought last year if it were not for China’s dams, a new study says, prompting a pushback from the intergovernmental Mekong River Commission (MRC). The 4,000-km (2,485-mile) Mekong is one of the world’s longest rivers – ...

As China shows signs of recovery from the COVID-19 outbreak, speculations abound about what a post-COVID-19 future will look like. Amid the cacophony of voices, consensus is gathering that global power balances will shift. What this shift might entail is fiercely debated. Some see China ...

Cracked riverbeds, empty fishing nets and, snaking its way through the parched landscape, a beautifully clear, blue-tinted river. This was the view of the mighty Mekong River earlier this year, when record-low water levels revealed a striking vulnerability to the main artery of Southeast Asia, a ...

Eleven massive dams straddle the mighty Mekong River before it leaves China and flows into Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and on into Vietnam. Yet I have long been skeptical  that China could use those 11 upstream dams, massive as they are, to turn off the ...

A new report that found China’s upstream dam management is responsible for dangerously low water levels and drought conditions along the Mekong River needs to be “studied”, according to a Cambodian National Mekong Commission official. The report, titled “Monitoring the Quantity of Water Flowing Through the ...

“No fish. Nothing. We can only catch enough to eat ourselves. We fish through the night and all we catch is one or two skewers for cooking,” a Lao fisherman told Radio Free Asia earlier this year. He spoke to journalists on his boat on the Mekong River ...

More water discharged from Chinese dams to the lower Mekong River in the dry season and less water in the rainy season. That means a reduction of drought and flooding in the lower Mekong countries. That was the ideal “cooperation” Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam ...

The Mekong River originates in China and winds its way south, flowing through or past five other countries — Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam — before it empties into the South China Sea. The Mekong is the beating heart of the region, and while ...

Groups working to protect the Mekong River have called for greater transparency and cooperation from China after a report that Chinese dams held back water during a damaging drought in downstream countries last year. China has disputed the findings of the U.S. government-funded study and said ...