Report of the Webinar on China’s Himalayan Hustle – Part II: Will Eco-Dominance Be China’s New War Front?

This report is an outcome of the webinar titled “China’s Himalayan Hustle – Part II: Will Eco-Dominance Be China’s New War” held on June 18, 2024. Dr. Jagannath Panda moderated the webinar and shared that this was the second webinar in the series. He outlined how China’s development projects in the Himalayan region are primarily aimed at securitizing its national interests by exploiting natural resources to meet the Chinese mainland’s growing energy and water demands. In the process, China intends to not only take greater control of the region but also regulate access to basic resources such as water for the neighbors. China’s attempts at controlling regional resources have international implications as they run counter to the basic tenets of a free, open, and rules-based global/Indo-Pacific order. In the wake of the Ukraine war, as China and Russia create greater convergence, the Russian control of the Arctic and China’s growing interest in the Arctic region for its resources will pose problems for the U.S. and the European states. Therefore, the Indo-Pacific stakeholders must create newer ways to combat China’s gluttonous need for natural resources and in turn to conserve the liberal world order ethos.

This webinar, therefore, involving some of the finest scholars on the subject, explored China’s Himalayan strategy through its control of natural resources. For such a purpose, the webinar addressed the following questions:

• In what ways is China expanding its revisionist goals in the trans-Himalayan region through renewable energy projects, including the BRI? What are China’s near-term and long-term plans in the Himalayan valley?
• Are China’s mega dams and large-scale renewable energy projects essential for clean energy? Or are they “green washing” initiatives, as a means to a geopolitical end?
• How is China’s modernization plan in Tibet affecting environmental degradation and its control or occupation of the Tibetan territories, language, people, and culture as a whole?
• Does the notion of China as a hydro-hegemon have legitimacy, or is it merely a myth?
• How can the international community, primarily the EU – which considers China a strategic competitor – as well as U.S. – for whom China poses a “pacing,” existential threat – and its regional allies and partners, including India – China’s regional rival that has most to lose in the Himalayas– collaborate to outmaneuver the Chinese strategy for exercising total dominance over resources?

The effort was to understand how India and the West could collaborate with regard to China’s Himalayan strategy which is unfolding for some time now. We know for a fact that at the beginning of this century, China introduced a neighborhood policy that is continuously evolving through military modernization in the Tibetan Plateau, through economic modernization programs, and most recently through the Belt and Road Initiative. The webinar discussed some of these issues and whether China was going ahead with its Himalayan strategy,
or was there something else that needs to be considered.