Politics in Asia Series. Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2018. viii, 241 pp. (Tables, graphs, maps.) US$140.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-138-06065-4.
China shares a border with fourteen other countries—the most of any nation on earth. Consistent with this fact, China shares an unusually high number of rivers with its neighbours (forty). With a rapid development of water resources serving economic growth over the past several decades, the challenge of managing many of these transboundary waterways in ways that will not antagonize China’s neighbors, has become a key regional and global security concern. China and Transboundary Water Politics explores the complexities of these challenges. What emerges from the eleven chapters authored by an impressive array of scholars is a set of critical management issues that are, in many ways, unique to each specific transboundary river system. The fact that most of these transboundary river systems are located in China’s southwest, northwest, and northeast—that is to say, in regions that differ markedly in climate and land use—suggests that this diverse array of challenges precludes a common approach to address the totality of the region’s transboundary water issues.
As a collection of papers presented at the workshop entitled, “Hydropolitics and Conflict Management in Transboundary River Basins: China and Its Neighbors,” hosted by Nanyang Technological University in July 2016, the volume is divided into three sections: Part I: “Key Factors Shaping China’s Transboundary Water Policies,” Part II: “Major Transboundary Rivers,” and Part III: “China and Global Water Governance.” The chapters in Part I lay out the factors that condition the politics of China’s transboundary rivers. This section of the volume makes clear that there is a complex array of analytical issues that shape any attempt to assess a host of different hydrological and geopolitical considerations of these river valleys that traverse a variety of climatic and geographic regions. Indeed, at the very outset, the volume’s editors note the complexity of these variables, while recognizing that future water cooperation lay in the hands of China since the vast majority of the region’s transboundary rivers have their origins in China. Eschewing the realist approach reflected in most academic and journalistic analyses of water security issues in the region, the editors argue that the current volume adopts a “multidisciplinary approach to systematically examine the complex reality of water interactions between China and its neighbors” that seeks to transcend the “state-centric geopolitical arena” by exploring the “political, institutional, legal, historic, geographical, and demographic factors that affected China’s policies and practices toward transboundary water issues” (4).
The limitations of this review preclude coverage of all chapters, but quick excursions into selected chapters will give a sense of the analytical and methodological complexity of China’s transboundary hydropolitics. In his chapter on “Assessing China’s Domestic Hydropolitics,” Scott Moore constructively encourages us to frame China’s transboundary water politics with an understanding of China’s domestic water assumptions and policy approaches. Moore argues that China’s unique brand of administrative decentralization engenders behaviors of provincial and local governments akin to those of nation states. As such, the manner by which China’s center manages the hyropolitics of these subnational entities provides a blueprint of sorts to guide an understanding of China’s political behavior vis-à-vis transboundary waterway governance. Also in Part I, Guo Yanjun’s examination of “The Evolution of Water Diplomacy in the Lancang-Mekong River Basin,” focuses on how the development of hydropower resources in China, taken here as an inevitable development, can accommodate downstream concerns centered on allocation and environmental concerns. Guo argues that China has exhibited restraint and signaled the willingness to collaborate with riparian countries as evidenced by the establishment of the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation mechanism. How this institution suggests the potential for greater collaboration in light of the existing institutional arrangements recommended by the Mekong River Commission, however, could be fruitfully explored in depth.
Part II of the volume focuses on the hydropolitics of major transboundary rivers in the region, with chapters focusing on the Amur, Yalu, Mekong, Brahmaputra, Salween, Ili, and Irtysh Rivers. From the chapters that respectively examine cooperation, or lack thereof, between China and the respective countries that share these waterways, it is difficult to extract commonalities among these case studies, showing again the complexity of the broader topic. In their chapter on the “Transboundary Cooperation on the Amur River Basin,” Eugene Simonov and Eugen Egidarev argue that despite the Amur’s importance to biodiversity and food production, and despite the presumed impulses of China’s “Silk Road Economic Belt” and “Ecological Civilization” policies, there have been no meaningful accomplishments in transboundary water management between China and Russia. In contrast, Li Zhifei argues that changes in the geopolitical environment in Northeast Asia have induced China to develop cooperative mechanisms with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea over management of the Yalu and Tumen Rivers. Also in Part II, Edward Grumbine provides a comprehensive analytical treatment of the transboundary challenges for China and the downstream riparian countries on the Mekong River (“Linking Environmental Security to Transboundary Water Governance to Manage the Mekong River”). Grumbine argues that variegated water, food, energy, and climate impacts on river development “are going to make any transition toward transboundary collaborative management challenging” (149).
Finally, in Part III, the volume editors attempt an overview of “new developments” in “China and Global Water Governance.” The major question tackled by the editors centers on “whether China will remain reluctant to take on responsibilities in water governance or become more active (or even proactive) in dealing with regional and global water-related issues” (220). To answer this question, the chapter examines the potential outcomes of three major developments: (1) the 2016 South China Sea Arbitration outcome; (2) China’s Road and Belt Initiative; and (3) US leadership in global water issues. The analysis of all three developments is cogent, but the ultimate conclusions offered about the future of China’s engagement suggest that China’s transboundary water cooperation will still largely be structured by the particularities of each river basin as framed by local (or regional) geopolitical realities.
David Pietz
The University of Arizona, Tucson, USA