With the way forward for a vital water-sharing treaty between India and Pakistan up within the air, one outdoors celebration is wanting on with eager curiosity: China.
For 65 years, the Indus Waters Treaty has seen the 2 South Asian rivals share entry and use of the Indus Basin, an unlimited space coated by the Indus River and its tributaries that additionally stretches into Afghanistan and China.
For a lot of that historical past, there was widespread reward for the settlement as a profitable demonstration of cooperation between adversarial states over a key shared useful resource. However specialists have famous the treaty has lengthy held the potential for battle. Drafters did not issue within the results of local weather change, and the Himalayan glaciers that feed the rivers at the moment are melting at document charges, in the end placing in danger the long-term sustainability of water provide. In the meantime, the continued battle over Kashmir, the place a lot of the basin is located, places cooperation in danger.
With treaty on ice, China steps in
That newest provocation threatening the treaty was a terrorist assault within the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir on April 22, 2025. In response to that assault, which India blamed on Pakistan and precipitated a four-day confrontation, New Delhi quickly suspended the treaty.
However even earlier than that assault, India and Pakistan had been locked in negotiation over the way forward for the treaty – the standing of which has been within the palms of worldwide arbitrators since 2016. Within the newest growth, on June 27, 2025, the Everlasting Courtroom of Arbitration issued a supplementary award in favor of Pakistan, arguing that India’s holding of the treaty in abeyance didn’t have an effect on its jurisdiction over the case. Furthermore, the treaty doesn’t enable for both celebration to unilaterally droop the treaty, the ruling prompt.
Amid the wrangling over the treaty’s future, Pakistan has turned to China for diplomatic and strategic assist. Such assist was evident throughout the battle that passed off following April’s terrorist assault, throughout which Pakistan employed Chinese language-made fighter jets and different army tools towards its neighbor.
In the meantime, in an obvious transfer to counter India’s suspension of the treaty, China and Pakistan have ramped up building of a serious dam undertaking that would offer water provide and electrical energy to elements of Pakistan.
So, why is China getting concerned? Partially, it displays the robust relationship between Pakistan and China, developed over six a long time.
However as an skilled in hydro politics, I consider Beijing’s involvement raises considerations: China just isn’t a impartial observer within the dispute. Moderately, Beijing has lengthy harbored a want to extend its affect within the area and to counter an India lengthy seen as a rival. Given the at-times fraught relationship between China and India – the 2 nations went to conflict in 1962 and proceed to interact in sporadic border skirmishes – there are considerations in New Delhi that Beijing could reply by disrupting the movement of rivers in its territory that feed into India.
In brief, any intervention by Beijing over the Indus Waters Treaty dangers stirring up regional tensions.
Wrangling over waters
The Indus Waters Treaty has already endured three armed conflicts between Pakistan and India, and till lately it served as an exemplar of learn how to forge a profitable bilateral settlement between two rival neighbors.
Riccardo Pravettoni, CC BY-SA
Below the preliminary phrases of the treaty, which every nation signed in 1960, India was granted management over three jap rivers the nations share – Ravi, Beas and Satluj – with a mean annual movement of 40.4 billion cubic meters. In the meantime, Pakistan was given entry to nearly 167.2 billion cubic meters of water from the western rivers – Indus, Jhelum and Chenab.
In India, the comparatively smaller distribution has lengthy been the supply of competition, with many believing the treaty’s phrases are overly beneficiant to Pakistan. India’s preliminary demand was for 25% of the Indus waters.
For Pakistan, the phrases of the division of the Indus Waters Treaty are painful as a result of they concretized unresolved land disputes tied to the partition of India in 1947. Specifically, the division of the rivers is framed inside the broader political context of Kashmir. The three main rivers – Indus, Jhelum and Chenab – movement via Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir earlier than getting into the Pakistan-controlled western a part of the Kashmir area.
However the instability of the Kashmir area – disputes across the Line of Management separating the Indian- and Pakistan-controlled areas are widespread – underscores Pakistan’s water vulnerability.
Practically 65% of Pakistanis stay within the Indus Basin area, in contrast with 14% for India. It’s due to this fact not stunning that Pakistan has warned that any try to chop off the water provide, as India has threatened, could be thought-about an act of conflict.
It additionally helps to elucidate Pakistan’s want to develop hydropower on the rivers it controls. One-fifth of Pakistan’s electrical energy comes from hydropower, and almost 21 hydroelectric energy vegetation are situated within the Indus Basin area.
Since Pakistan’s financial system depends closely on agriculture and the water wanted to keep up agricultural land, the destiny of the Indus Waters Treaty is of the utmost significance to Pakistan’s leaders.
Such situations have pushed Islamabad to be a keen companion with China in a bid to shore up its water provide.
China gives technical experience and monetary assist to Pakistan for quite a few hydropower tasks in Pakistan, together with the Diamer Bhasha Dam and Kohala Hydropower Venture. These tasks play a major function in addressing Pakistan’s power necessities and have been a key facet of the transboundary water relationship between the 2 nations.
Utilizing water as a weapon?
With it’s rivalry with India and its want to concurrently work with Pakistan on quite a few points, China more and more sees itself as a stakeholder within the Indus Waters Treaty, too. Chinese language media narratives have framed India because the aggressor within the dispute, warning of the hazard of utilizing “water as a weapon” and noting that the supply of the Indus River lies in China’s Western Tibet area.
Doing so matches Beijing’ s higher strategic presence in South Asian politics. After the terrorist assault, China International Minister Wang Yi reaffirmed China’s assist for Pakistan, showcasing the connection as an “all-weather strategic” partnership and referring to Pakistan as an “ironclad friend.”
And in response to India’s suspension of the treaty, China introduced it was to speed up work on the numerous Mohmand hydropower undertaking on the tributary of the Indus River in Pakistan.
Development on the Mohmand Dam.
Pakistan Water and Energy Growth Authority
Chinese language funding in Pakistan’s hydropower sector presents substantial alternatives for each nations with reference to power safety and selling financial development.
The Indus cascade undertaking below the China-Pakistan Financial Hall initiative, for instance, guarantees to offer cumulative hydropower era capability of round 22,000 megawatts. But the truth that undertaking broke floor in Gilgit-Baltistan, a disputed space in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, underscores the delicacy of the scenario.
Beijing’s backing of Pakistan is basically motivated by a mixture of financial and geopolitical pursuits, notably in legitimizing the China-Pakistan Financial Hall. But it surely comes at the price of stirring up regional tensions.
As such, the alignment of Chinese language and Pakistani pursuits in creating hydro tasks can pose an additional problem to the soundness of South Asia’s water-sharing agreements, particularly within the Indus Basin. Lately, the chief minister of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which borders China, warned that Beijing’s hydro tasks within the Western Tibet area quantity to a ticking “water bomb.”
To diffuse such tensions – and to get the Indus Waters Treaty again on monitor – it behooves India, China and Pakistan to interact in diplomacy and dialogue. Such engagement is, I consider, important in addressing the continued water-related challenges in South Asia.
