Life
on the Mekong River has changed forever.
Photographer: Daniel Moss/Bloomberg
Daniel
Moss, Columnist
Beijing’s
formidable influence has traction because no country or authority officially
controls the historic waterway.
June
10, 2025 at 2:00 PM CDT
By
Daniel Moss
Daniel
Moss is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asian economies. Previously, he
was executive editor for economics at Bloomberg News.
The
Mekong River is more than the sum of its nearly 3,000 miles. It’s one of the
world’s most valuable waterways and has been vital to political power in
Southeast Asia for centuries. As a prized strategic and financial asset,
commerce and violence have marked the basin’s story. The French tried — and
failed — to re-engineer the river to anchor their imperial rule. American
soldiers fought fiercely in its delta, and the Khmer Rouge casually meted out
atrocities not far from its banks.
Today,
the river is again under siege. Dams may provide electric power to boost
economic growth, but extract a terrible toll on the flora and fauna that
villages have depended upon for millennia. Statecraft is colliding with major
power tensions and national development goals, and the Mekong is coming off
worse. Rarely, if ever, has the river’s future been more embattled.
Co-operation is in short supply, just as it’s needed most.
Upheaval
is everywhere you look. “Stop Dams” banners dangle from windows of a
conservation office in Thailand and families lament the scarcity of
once-abundant giant catfish. Boats carry tourists and cargo over previously
treacherous stretches, signs its once mighty flow has been tamed. A gaudy
casino decorates the Laos shoreline, while Cambodia is finalizing plans for a
Suez-style canal to be constructed with Chinese assistance.
The scars along the river from a dam in
Laos.
Photographer: Suchiwa Panya/AFP/Getty
Images
Beijing’s
influence here is formidable. Its rapid industrialization and urbanization over
the past several decades demanded commodities easily obtainable from the river
system, such as electricity, water, sand and timber. A fifth of the river winds
through China, while dams upstream there have reordered life far beyond its
borders. The country has fostered influence through infrastructure development
projects under the auspices of the Belt and Road Initiative. Cars made by
Shenzhen-based BYD Co. are a fixture on Southeast Asia’s roads and the Chinese
bubble-tea chains ubiquitous in financial centers like Singapore and Hong Kong
are popping up. Seldom has a single power wielded this much clout in the
region.
The Mekong’s Problems Start in China
More
than half of the river’s mainstream dams are in China, reshaping life
downstream for its neighbors
The
US, which sent around 58,000 servicemen to their deaths during the Vietnam War,
can still make a difference — if it desires. But Washington appears willing to
cede the area without much fight. This is a challenge that barely registers
above the din of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, the war in Ukraine and
tensions in the Taiwan Strait.
More’s
the pity: The competition among Mekong countries, each seeking to harness its
bounty for parochial goals, is intensifying. The river is Asia’s third-longest
and among the world’s most biodiverse and productive. The planet’s largest
inland fishery winds through six nations 1and the livelihoods of almost 70
million people depend upon it.
Diplomatic Failures
Asia’s
premier diplomatic body, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, isn’t up
to the task of policing the river. This reflects a wariness of taking on China,
which controls the headwaters and is the largest trading partner of almost
every other state, as well as a historical reluctance to interfere in each
other's business. Either way, it is victim to a whatever-you-can-get-away with
attitude.
The
Mekong tragedy has more than one villain. The basin has more than 700 dams,
according to the Stimson Center, the most impactful of which lie in China,
altering the flow of water and nutrient-laden sediment in profound ways. Laos,
Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam are culpable, too. Mining is hollowing out the
riverbed. Sitting in one of the restaurants that dot the waterfront of Phnom
Penh, it’s easy to lose count of the sand barges that chug past. Drive for less
than an hour and residents will show you collapsed riverbanks.
But
what China does matters greatly. If the White House truly wants to constrain
the nation’s ascent, a pivot to the Mekong is in order. The withdrawal of funds
for key conservation projects by the United States Agency for International
Development is a bad start. In the absence of a counterweight, it’s China that
will have the biggest say and local governments will defer to Beijing. The
world’s second-biggest economy is next door and, unlike America, isn’t going
anywhere.
More
Than Half of Mekong River Dams Were Added After 2000
Operational
dams on the Mekong River and its tributaries
Source:
Ang et al. “Dams in the Mekong,” Earth System Science Data (2024)
Fifty
years after the last helicopter left Saigon, Americans still have a stake in
what happens in these countries. Thailand is a treaty partner. US naval ships
occasionally call at Vietnamese ports; Hanoi and Washington have in the past
jointly protested Chinese drills in the South China Sea. The economies have
become vital for global supply chains; Vietnam has been a prized destination
for US corporations looking for factory sites outside China. Much of Cambodia’s
textile exports are destined for the US, and despite that country’s move to
nurture ties with Beijing, its economy is largely dollarized. Greenbacks are
widely used in everyday life. Those BYD vehicles are priced in US dollars.
America is still a player, and can be in the future, despite Trump’s apparent
nonchalance.
“Who
is going to stand up to China here?” Suebsakun Kidnukorn, who teaches social
innovation at Mae Fah Luang University, asked me one recent afternoon in the
northern Thai city of Chiang Rai. “It's not just a physical change, but a
change in our mindset, in our psychology. People know China is here and fear
it.”
A Storied History
Nations
have long sought supremacy over the Mekong’s waters. French engineers devised
schemes to dynamite cataracts and waterfalls to open commercial passages to
China, grandiose designs that ultimately failed. Before that, Spanish and Dutch
adventurers dabbled in making the waterway work for them. The post-1945 period
was under American sway until Communists triumphed in Saigon, Phnom Penh and
Vientiane three decades later. But the current aspirations for the river, which
leave it dramatically altered, are something the French could scarcely dream
about, and Washington’s Cold Warriors only glimpsed.
The US Navy's River Assault Force on the
Mekong River in 1967.
Source: Bettmann/Getty Images
There’s
no shortage of ambition. More dams are planned. Road and rail arteries once
considered pie-in-the-sky have become feasible. Laos wants to become the
“battery of Southeast Asia,” exporting power as far afield as Malaysia and
Singapore. Vietnam needs to fuel its manufacturing boom but is running out of
sand, and likely to fall back on what’s mined in other Mekong countries.
The
problem is that the race to harness the river has no real serious umpire. The
Mekong River Commission, formed in 1995 in an accord between Vietnam, Laos,
Cambodia and Thailand, has no enforcement power. China isn’t a signatory,
though it is a dialogue partner. The commission promotes dialogue, but its
inability to force compliance means dams and diversion projects have proceeded
at a rapid clip.
The
limits of the MRC reflect the shortcomings of the Asean.2 It talks a good game
but its response to important issues tends to underwhelm. The association is
light years away from the shared jurisdiction and sovereignty that makes the
European Union effective. Leaders publicly abhor anything that can be
considered interference in the internal affairs of neighbors. This, by design,
constrains the commission and sets efforts to preserve the Mekong up for
failure. National priorities come first, collective action a distant second.
A ferry terminal on the Mekong River in
Phnom Penh.
Photographer: Mohd Rasfan/AFP/Getty Images
Asean
doesn’t have to be completely hamstrung, however. The haze from fires in
Indonesia that choked large parts of the region in the 1980s and 1990s became
bad enough that joining forces couldn’t be avoided. Still, that was a challenge
that lay almost entirely within the group and didn’t require standing up to an
outside power, let alone one as huge as China. Nor did it end the haze itself.
It would be a brave nation that takes the lead on managing access to the river,
which has given, and taken, lives for thousands of years. Still, the prolonged
degradation of such a shared watercourse will, at some point, become too
significant to ignore.
The
Mekong saga also underscores the differences in approach of the region’s
maritime nations, such as Indonesia and the Philippines, and the mainland
economies. If the countries for whom the river is their backyard don’t want any
intervention, why should those surrounded by the sea push for one and aggravate
China? They have their own issues with President Xi Jinping, who is asserting
sovereignty over reefs and militarizing small islands in the South China Sea.
These smaller economies have their hands full with Beijing.
Local Activism
Some
communities aren’t waiting for the MRC. Beyond the frustrations of diplomacy,
this is also a story of occasional wins by grass-roots organizations, and the
courage and advocacy of a few individuals. Niwat Roykaew, a former school
teacher from Chiang Khong in Thailand, won the prestigious Goldman
Environmental Prize for his role in persuading Thai authorities to walk away
from a river-blasting project. The idea was to blow up sections of the Mekong
near the Laos border. The destruction would have been huge — and cleared the
way for Chinese cargo ships.
When
I met Niwat at a local conservation group’s headquarters, he was under no
illusion that he’ll change the course of history. But piece by piece, some
worst-case scenarios can be mitigated. The issue isn’t one of development
versus no development, he said, or of opposing China on grounds of ideology.
“The Mekong has always been about politics, going back to the French days,” he
told me. “Now, it’s about China. OK, for now we stopped them, but they haven’t
let go of the thought. The lesson is never to give up.”
Niwat Roykaew. Photographer: Luke
Duggleby/Bloomberg
Chanarong
Wongla is another warrior. Together with other activists, he pushed the Thai
government to ask Laos to consider another location for a contentious dam, the
Sanakham hydropower venture, planned for the Mekong mainstream a few miles
north of their town of Chiang Khan. This might sound like a procedural victory;
Laos isn’t obliged to move the location. But he’ll take it. “Local people do
not have the power to intervene in the diplomatic process, so we take it
project by project,” he told me.
Despite
the breakthrough, Chanarong is in mourning for the Mekong that existed in his
youth. Back then, if you wanted to have a fish dinner, you first lit the fire,
warmed the water and got everything ready. Last was the fish. He would walk
down to the river, throw a line, get a bite immediately, land it and take it
back to the boiling pot. Now, you would have to fish for days. Dams skew
natural fluctuations in water levels, affecting migration and spawning.
Piecemeal
approaches have their place. When diplomats fail and collective action is
absent, stakeholders need to act where they can. But it can’t be left to
provincial players. Communities will keep being diminished, and migration to
crowded urban areas in search of jobs will continue. The densely populated
Mekong delta of Vietnam is sinking.
Controversial Canal
If
there’s one project that epitomizes the mix of domestic politics and financial
statecraft, it’s the Funan-Techo Canal in Cambodia. It’s just outside the
Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, about 15 minutes past the turn to Xi Jinping
Boulevard.
The
112-mile passage, which aims to link the Phnom Penh area with the Gulf of
Thailand, has been contentious since the day it was conceived. The watercourse
will give ships a path to the sea without having to navigate through Vietnam.
The price, which local media say could run to $1.7 billion, is heavy for one of
Asia’s poorest nations. Where would Cambodia get the money, and could the work
ultimately be used for military purposes? (China has already helped upgrade a
Cambodian naval base on the coast.) The project is bound to further alter the
flow of water and sediment. Wet season flooding, which lays the ground for
agriculture and provides vital spawning grounds for fish, is likely to be
curtailed.
China Backs Ambitious Cambodian Canal
The
contentious project, which would allow ships to bypass Vietnam en route to the
sea, threatens crucial floodwaters
Source:
Cambodian National Mekong Committee
Cambodia
has done little to alleviate these concerns. In its August 2023 advice to the
MRC, the government claims the work will be on tributaries, and not on the
mainstream Mekong. That significantly reduces its obligations to other MRC
members and allows for accelerated construction. The government’s claims are
problematic. Having visited the site, it’s hard to portray the water as being
from anywhere other than the Mekong. Phnom Penh’s submission described the
canals use as primarily economic, to aid navigation and tourism. Cambodia has
subsequently played up benefits to agriculture and irrigation. The shifting
narrative doesn’t inspire confidence.
Irrigation
is only required during the dry season, according to Brian Eyler, director of
the Stimson Center's Southeast Asian program, and the MRC accord states that
such diversion projects must be agreed upon by the nations. “The Cambodian
government, from its own position, acted very smartly,” said Eyler, author of
the book Last Days of the Mighty Mekong. “But they missed the long game. By
applying their own interpretation of the agreement, that paves the way for
others to do the same. I fear it will be the undoing of the Mekong agreement.”
It
isn’t too late for Cambodia to reconsider. Opening to consultation and greater
scrutiny might result in some changes around the edges that alleviate the worst
environmental damage, and ease suspicions of neighbors. But it’s highly
unlikely the project will be stopped. That power would rest with Prime Minister
Hun Manet or, maybe, with the undertaking’s backers. China, the top creditor to
Cambodia, is courting Southeast Asia as a way of countering US efforts to
isolate it. American officials have expressed concern that the People’s
Liberation Army seeks a presence in the Gulf of Thailand, something both
Beijing and Phnom Penh deny.
The Funan-Techo canal will reshape parts
of the Mekong Basin.
Photographer: Suy Se/AFP/Getty Images.
While
the MRC has plenty of flaws, the Stimson Center did note positive signs in its
most recent annual report on the Mekong. China pledged to share some dam
operations data with the commission. Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam agreed to a
pilot study on how they might jointly operate some dams. And some wet season
flows of water, historically vital to the movement of natural sediment and the
ability of floodwaters to provide fertile material for agriculture in the dry
season, suffered smaller reductions in recent years than previously.
The
Mekong has served the communities along its banks for millennia. Now, thanks to
technology, a voracious appetite for energy and resources, and the ability to
extract them on a grand scale, the river faces a transformation that may leave
it unrecognizable to past generations. A plea from Chanarong resonated with me:
Don’t forget about us. The Mekong belongs not just to people and businesses,
but to humanity.
Do
we really lack the capacity to preserve it? Are nations so bereft of
imagination and will? The answers aren’t encouraging. Until the Mekong is more
of a unifier and less of a divider, this great asset will be forever
diminished.
SOURCES:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/features/2025-06-10/mekong-river-is-threatened-by-dams-from-china-to-vietnam
https://www.baoquocdan.org/2025/06/china-and-its-neighbors-are-ravaging.html?m=1
