India and China on Thursday maintained a semblance of accepting each other’s concerns and contentions about Chinese plans to construct a major dam on the Brahmaputra river in Tibet even as the disengagement along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh remains a vexed issue.
After the Chinese Communist Party-owned Global Times reported on Sunday that China will build a hydropower project on the Yarlung Zangbo (as the Brahmapura is called in China), there was concern that this would affect the lower riparian countries — India and Bangladesh.
China sought to allay fears with statements coming out of its embassy in New Delhi on Wednesday and Beijing on Thursday. India, for now, appears to have accepted the Chinese contention that they are only undertaking run-of-the-river (which involves little or no water storage) hydropower projects.
