Big story from @hkbeech: “New research show[s] that Beijing’s engineers appear to have directly caused the record low levels of water in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/world/asia/china-mekong-drought.html

“The satellite data doesn’t lie, and there was plenty of water in the Tibetan Plateau, even as countries like Cambodia and Thailand were under extreme duress,” said Alan Basist, who co-wrote the report. “There was just a huge volume of water that was being held back in China.” 1/

“The problem is that the Chinese elite see water as something for their use, not as a shared commodity,” said @aikunming, director of the Stimson Center’s Southeast Asia program. 2/

As China’s section of the Mekong welcomed an above average volume of water, downstream countries were stricken by a drought so crushing that parts of the river dried up entirely, leaving cracked riverbed exposed in a season when fishing should have been plentiful. 3/

Foreign Minister Wang Yi contended that China, too, was suffering. He suggested that the Chinese leadership was being magnanimous by sending water downstream, especially at a time when Beijing was contending with a severe #coronavirus outbreak. 4/

“Though China itself has also been afflicted by the drought and a serious shortage of precipitation in the upper reaches, it has overcome various difficulties to increase the water discharge,” Wang said.

Mr. Basist disputed this take. 5/

“You look at our mapping, and it’s bright blue with plenty of water in China and bright red from an extreme lack of water in Thailand and Cambodia,” Mr. Basist said. “China can regulate this river’s flow through dams, and that appears to be exactly what it’s doing.” 6/

“The water release by China is political,” said Chainarong Setthachua, a lecturer and Mekong expert at Mahasarakham University in northeastern Thailand. “It’s made out to be them doing a favor. They create damage (by drowning crops), but they ask for gratitude.” 7/

“Glaciers are bank accounts of water but with climate change they’re melting fast,” Mr. Basist said. “The Chinese are building safe deposit boxes on the upper Mekong because they know the bank account is going to be depleted eventually and they want to keep it in reserve.” 8/

For more on China’s “it’s complicated” relationship with the Lancang/Mekong, see this 2017 feature series by @nisnis and @LucForsyth: http://www.sixthtone.com/topics/10189/mekong