Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS)

For Vietnam, the so called “the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation” (TAC) of China, in essence, is Beijing’s assertive foreign policy. Despite positive signs in Vietnam – China relations since 1991, fundamental difficulties still remain as to the cooperative efforts of

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managing the South China Sea disputes. In April 2007, 41 Vietnamese fishermen were detained near the Spratlys by China’s naval vessels (Hensengerth, 2010). Since 2011, China has repeatedly moved Haiyang Shiyou 981 oil rig into disputing waters. Simultaneously, China has dredged and occupied some of the claiming Paracel Islands (Council on Foreign Relations, 2015).

In order to “mitigate the China – threat perception” Vietnam engages China in cooperative programmes, especially the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) (Hensengerth, 2010). This is perfectly suited to the logic of one of the hedging strategy’s components – economic pragmatism.

According Le Hong Hiep, to operate hedging strategy Vietnam needs to deploy

“economic pragmatism” component (Le, 2013b), in which it is encouraged to intensify economic cooperation with China, and the GMS is such a cooperation. In such cooperative endeavor, in spite of Vietnam’s interests in building hydropower in upstream and its plans to purchase hydropower, the country’s national interest and security are still threatened.

a. Background

Originated from China’s Tibetan mountainous plateau, which is about 5,000m above sea level to Mekong Delta, the Mekong river is the tenth-longest river in the world flowing 4,909 km through six countries: China, Myanmar, Thailand, Lao PDR, Cambodia and Vietnam (Mekong River Commission, 2017). Even though the river is twelfth in term of length in the world, eighth in term of water discharge (International Center for Environmental Management, 2010), with a total of annual flow around 475 billion cubic meters per year into the sea (Hortle, Lieng, & Valbo-Jorgensen, 2004). The trans-boundary Mekong river basin is the twenty-first in terms of largest river basin of the world with a total area of 795 000 km2 (Mekong River Commission, 2017), sharing with China and Myanmar are called the Upper

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Mekong Basin (UMB) while the rest is Lower Mekong Basin (LMB) (Mekong River Commission, 2000).

The aquatic, wetland, forest and fishery resources from the whole river system are the main life-source supporting around 70 million people (Cambodia’s Development Policy Research Institute, 2008). Most of them are poor farmers and fishermen who live on these riparian parts of the world (Pearse-Smith, 2012).

Table 4-4: Country areas in the Mekong river basin

Source: (Food and Agriculture Organization, 2011)

Vietnam is located at the bottom of the Mekong River, which is the gateway for important transport routes in the basin. For Vietnam, the Mekong basin occupies 25% of the country's land area and 35% of the country’s population, and thus, this area is strategically important for the Vietnamese socio-economic development, ecological environment and defense security.

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Figure 4-5: Map of Mekong river basin

Source: (Food and Agriculture Organization, 2011)

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In 1992, China (in particular Yunnan and Guangxi), Lao People's Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, which are commonly characterized by common history, culture, with the support of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), initiated the economic cooperation program in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS), aiming to strengthen economic relations with each other. With the support of ADB and other development partners, the GMS helps identify and implement high-priority projects of the sub-region in a wide range of fields: transportation, trade – transportation support, energy, agriculture, environment, human resources, urbanization, tourism, information and communication technology, telecommunications, border gate economic zones and others. The common tasks are to improve connectivity through the sustainable development of physical infrastructure and the transformation of transport corridors into transnational economic corridors; intensify competitiveness through the efficient support of cross-border passenger and cargo transport, market integration, production processes and value chains; enhance public awareness through programs and projects addressing common social and environmental concerns (The Asian Development Bank, 2015). The GMS has developed dozens of collaborative projects and programs with the capital up to billions from ADB so far.

b. The downstream impact is already visible:

It could be said that although the GMS partly help improve Vietnam – China economic relations to develop Vietnamese domestic economy, Vietnam itself provides an opportunity for China to exploit its sources. Hydropower has long been considered as a "green energy"

source since it can be renewable and has non-greenhouse gas emissions in the production process. In addition, the dams theoretically also help control flow, regulate water flow, prevent flooding or drought in downstream; help the agricultural development. For these reasons, while the development of other renewable energy sources such as marine energy,

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wind power, solar energy, etc. are subject to financial and technical constraints, hydropower is a rational option (Trung Tâm Con Người Và Thiên Nhiên, 2012).

Technically, the hydropower potential in the Mekong basin could be as high as 176,350 - 250,000 MW. The four downstream countries (Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Viet Nam) have a national hydropower potential estimated at 50,000 - 64,750 MW, of which the downstream of the Mekong can provide 30,000MW (International Center for Environmental Management, 2010).

In the late 1990s, because of the rising demand of economic growth and energy (International Center for Environmental Management, 2010), China began to build at least seven hydropower dams in the upstream of Mekong River and has now completed and commissioned four dams. At the same time, Laos and Cambodia began to plan to build 12 dams on the mainstream. The tributaries of the Mekong have also been mined for hydropower. In 2011, there were more than 30 completed dams and other 12 were under construction. It is expected that by 2030 there will be an additional 30 hydropower dams deployed on tributaries (Stone, 2011).

China is building a system of dams that is a strategic importance for their energy. This is a part of China's East-West Transmitting Project. Accordingly, Yunnan province will supply Guangxi with power. In Yunnan alone, China has been building up to 14 large dams for hydropower, including the world's tallest completed dam Xiǎowān (292m), which has the equivalent of all the reservoirs of Southeast Asia (Hoan, 2009). The upper-stream dams like Xiǎowān might change the water flow, the pace of the Mekong River as well as water quality and even impact the ecological diversity of the river. Moreover, the Chinese Yellow River dam which has been building to bring water from Yangtze River to the north is the most dangerous dam. This is because China will have to take water from the Mekong River to compensate for Yangtze and this obviously damages the water source of downstream.

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While hydropower brings about direct benefits to national grid consumers, developers, financial investors, and local governments, most of the costs and damages from hydropower development are placed on vulnerable riverside communities and some economic sectors (International Center for Environmental Management, 2010). Vietnam is the only country without mainstream hydropower, thus will be most influenced for being located in the end of the Mekong River. Especially, the Mekong Delta and the Central Highlands that are the important part of Vietnam’s territory are affected mostly. Clearly, this is because up-stream dams will prevent silt from the Mekong Delta, affecting fish resources and its agriculture. As a result, 17 million Vietnamese living along the Mekong will directly suffer from the environment consequences of the deployed energy projects: erosion, water shortage, inundation,… (Hoan, 2009):

Flow

Once the hydropower dams are built, the water pressure between the river and sea will be reduced. Along with this, the decreasing ability of flow in dry season, the effects of climate change and the rise of sea level will increase salinity intrusion, affecting agricultural and aqua-cultural production in the Mekong Delta.

Alluvium

Every year, the Mekong River transports about 160 million tons of silt. The amount of silt in the Mekong Delta is currently about 26 million tons per year, down to 7 million tons per year in the future. Additionally, a large amount of silt will be trapped by dams. Therefore, the amount of nutrients decreases from 4,157 tons per year to 1,039 tons per year. This will lead to a decline in agricultural and fishery productivity, increasing riverbank erosion. Loss of silt associated with the phenomenon of reducing sediment along the coast leading to the lost opportunity of expanding the size of the Mekong Delta (Trung Tâm Con Người Và Thiên

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Nhiên, 2012). On the other hand, the impact of coastal flows along the southwest will increase erosion in the eastern coastal areas near the estuaries (Xue, Liu, & Ge, 2011).

For example, in the high flood season of the year 1998, the acidic sour water spreads that affect the sowing. Mekong tributaries in Mekong Delta that normally accumulate noxious substances during the dry season are not finned by floodwaters. When the flood was in super-high level, China’s hydropower flushes, downstream area catches up enough (Hoan, 2009). In the dry season, hydropower dams on the Mekong basin intensify water storage. At that time, Cambodia uses more water, and then Vietnam is placed in a difficult situation. This is because if the Mekong Delta is not received enough water flow over 2,000 𝑚³ per second, salt water from the sea will penetrate very deep (Hoan, 2009). The presence of too many hydroelectric dams on the Mekong River in the coming time will make the dry season in the Mekong Delta dry up.

Aquaculture

If mainstream dams in downstream are implemented, freshwater aquaculture, marine fisheries and aquaculture of Vietnam will be affected. According to Mekong working group, the loss of white fish in the Mekong Delta is about 240,000 to 480,000 tons / year. In the Mekong basin, there are 65% of white fish, 35% black fish. If the price is $2,500 per ton, every year Mekong Delta will lose about $500,000 to $1 billion of only white fish. Because black fish eats white fish for survival, the disappearance of white fish causes the loss of black fish (Trung Tâm Con Người Và Thiên Nhiên, 2012). Additionally, due to the fluctuations of nutrient resources and the dynamics of coastal riverine, the output of coastal fisheries in the Mekong Delta has also decreased. What is more, aquaculture is also affected by the decreasing flow, leading to a decrease in river cleaning capacity and nutrient content.

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In sum, it could be said that Vietnam’s efforts in running hedging strategy has not been succeeded, especially in the case of Mekong River basin – GMS because Vietnamese interests bring about contradictory results. Although the co-operations over transnationally shared freshwater resources between Vietnam and China have improved its economic relations with China, they may result in unexpected results on Vietnam. Obviously, “instead of curbing its dam-building, China is hard at work building several more Mekong dams, where the downstream impact is already visible” (Chellaney, 2016). This action is undoubtedly threatening Vietnam’s national interest and security in general, and particularly the life-source of indigenous people living in the lower areas of the Mekong (International Rivers, 2008). Recently, upstream countries have been building hydropower projects which prevent water source flowing into Vietnam, seriously affecting areas that mainly depend on that water resource (Bộ Tài nguyên và Môi trường, 2010).