Michael Richardson: Water politics are heating up

China's pollution of the environment and its enormous demand for natural resources and energy to fuel its rapid economic growth are injecting a potentially disruptive element in Beijing's relations with neighbouring states - water politics.

Russia is on alert after a big chemical spill in its far-east territory, carried from China by one of several major rivers common to both countries.

The toxic slick is heading towards Khabarovsk, a border city of nearly 600,000 people, and is expected to reach there next week.

The accident has renewed questions about the costs of China's breakneck economic boom and the culture of official secrecy that allowed some Chinese officials to withhold information about the danger of the spill.

Several senior officials, including the head of China's environmental protection agency, have resigned as a result of the cover-up.

China is not just a rising economic and military force, it is Asia's dominant headwater power. This is an aspect of the growing Chinese influence on its neighbours, for both good and ill, that is seldom recognised.

Many of the big rivers that sustain people, agriculture and industry in the Russian far east, Central Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia start in Chinese territory.

They include the Songhua, Heilong, Ili and Irtysh that flow into Russia or Kazakhstan.

They also include long stretches of the headwaters of the Brahmaputra River before it reaches India's Ganges River and Bangladesh. Many of Southeast Asia's largest rivers come from deep inside China, too. Among them are the Salween, Mekong and Red Rivers.

What China does to this vital supply of water - by building dams, diverting flows for its own use, or polluting upstream sections - affects its downstream neighbours, a point graphically illustrated by the 100km chemical slick heading for Khabarovsk.

Both the benzene and nitrobenzen in the water can cause blood disorders in people exposed to high doses. Benzene also causes cancer.

The Chinese Government formally apologised to Russia late last month after the two countries said they had agreed to set up a hotline so that Beijing could keep Moscow informed about the spill.

But Russian environmentalists say China should have consulted its neighbour more quickly and extensively after the spill. Beijing didn't officially notify Moscow until nine days after the accident.

Russia's chief state epidemiologist, Gennady Onishchenko, said more than a million people in the Russian far east could be affected by the residues of benzene in the water. Some fear the slick may poison fish and cause other long-term damage.

"Such a heavily-populated territory as China by definition cannot give us clean water," said Onishchenko, who is also Russia's consumer rights watchdog. "We need to switch big towns to more secure sources of water."

China, which faces growing pressure to provide more clean water and electric power to its 1.3 billion people, is intensifying use of its fresh water resources and harnessing previously untapped rivers.

Hydro dams on rivers in China provide about 100 million kilowatts of electricity, about 23 per cent of total capacity.

The Government plans to triple hydro power supply by 2020. The programme includes a series of huge dams on Chinese sections of the Mekong and Salween that downstream countries in Southeast Asia fear will affect the amount and quality of water they receive.

China's increasing withdrawals of water from the Ili are contributing to the drying-up of Kazakhstan's Lake Balkhash, the second largest body of water in Central Asia. And construction of a 300km canal to divert water from the Irtysh is causing concern in both Kazakstan and Russia because the river flows from China into both countries.

To head off protests, Beijing has held talks with its neighbours about its plans to make fuller use of the shared rivers.

It has also offered some of the countries compensating deals in energy supply, trade, aid, concessional loans and investment.

Some critics say binding transboundary agreements on river water allocation are needed.

But China is unlikely to sign such accords at a time when demand for water has never been greater and will increase even more in future.

* Michael Richardson, a former Asia editor of the International Herald Tribune, is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.