With the way forward for a a very powerful water-sharing treaty between India and Pakistan up within the air, one outdoor birthday party is taking a look on with willing hobby: China.
For 65 years, the Indus Waters Treaty has noticed the 2 South Asian opponents proportion get right of entry to and use of the Indus Basin, a limiteless space coated through the Indus River and its tributaries that still stretches into Afghanistan and China.
For far of that historical past, there was fashionable reward for the settlement as a a success demonstration of cooperation between opposed states over a key shared useful resource. However mavens have famous the treaty has lengthy held the possibility of struggle. Drafters did not issue within the results of local weather trade, and the Himalayan glaciers that feed the rivers at the moment are melting at file charges, in the end striking in peril the long-term sustainability of water provide. In the meantime, the continued struggle over Kashmir, the place a lot of the basin is positioned, places cooperation in peril.
With treaty on ice, China steps in
That newest provocation threatening the treaty was once a terrorist assault within the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir on April 22, 2025. In line with that assault, which India blamed on Pakistan and prompted a four-day war of words, New Delhi quickly suspended the treaty.
However even ahead of that assault, India and Pakistan were locked in negotiation over the way forward for the treaty – the standing of which has been within the arms of world arbitrators since 2016. In the newest construction, on June 27, 2025, the Everlasting Courtroom of Arbitration issued a supplementary award in want of Pakistan, arguing that India’s protecting of the treaty in abeyance didn’t have an effect on its jurisdiction over the case. Additionally, the treaty does now not permit for both birthday party to unilaterally droop the treaty, the ruling prompt.
Amid the wrangling over the treaty’s long run, Pakistan has grew to become to China for diplomatic and strategic beef up. Such beef up was once obtrusive all the way through the struggle that happened following April’s terrorist assault, all the way through which Pakistan hired Chinese language-made fighter jets and different army apparatus 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 significant dam venture that would supply water provide and electrical energy to portions of Pakistan.
So, why is China getting concerned? Partly, it displays the robust dating between Pakistan and China, evolved over six a long time.
However as a professional in hydro politics, I consider Beijing’s involvement raises considerations: China isn’t a impartial observer within the dispute. Reasonably, Beijing has lengthy harbored a want to extend its affect within the area and to counter an India lengthy noticed as a rival. Given the at-times fraught dating between China and India – the 2 nations went to battle in 1962 and proceed to interact in sporadic border skirmishes – there are considerations in New Delhi that Beijing would possibly reply through disrupting the float of rivers in its territory that feed into India.
In brief, any intervention through Beijing over the Indus Waters Treaty dangers stirring up regional tensions.
Wrangling over waters
The Indus Waters Treaty has already persevered 3 armed conflicts between Pakistan and India, and till just lately it served as an exemplar of find out how to forge a a success bilateral settlement between two rival neighbors.
Riccardo Pravettoni, CC BY-SA
Beneath the preliminary phrases of the treaty, which every nation signed in 1960, India was once granted regulate over 3 japanese rivers the nations proportion – Ravi, Beas and Satluj – with a mean annual float of 40.4 billion cubic meters. In the meantime, Pakistan was once given get right of entry to to just about 167.2 billion cubic meters of water from the western rivers – Indus, Jhelum and Chenab.
In India, the reasonably smaller distribution has lengthy been the supply of rivalry, with many believing the treaty’s phrases are overly beneficiant to Pakistan. India’s preliminary call for was once for 25% of the Indus waters.
For Pakistan, the phrases of the department of the Indus Waters Treaty are painful as a result of they concretized unresolved land disputes tied to the partition of India in 1947. Particularly, the department of the rivers is framed throughout the broader political context of Kashmir. The 3 primary rivers – Indus, Jhelum and Chenab – float thru Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir ahead of getting into the Pakistan-controlled western a part of the Kashmir area.
However the instability of the Kashmir area – disputes across the Line of Keep an eye on keeping apart the Indian- and Pakistan-controlled spaces are commonplace – underscores Pakistan’s water vulnerability.
Just about 65% of Pakistanis reside within the Indus Basin area, when put next with 14% for India. It’s due to this fact now not sudden that Pakistan has warned that any try to bring to an end the water provide, as India has threatened, can be thought to be an act of battle.
It additionally is helping to provide an explanation for Pakistan’s want to expand hydropower at the rivers it controls. One-fifth of Pakistan’s electrical energy comes from hydropower, and just about 21 hydroelectric energy vegetation are situated within the Indus Basin area.
Since Pakistan’s financial system is based closely on agriculture and the water had to care for agricultural land, the destiny of the Indus Waters Treaty is of the maximum significance to Pakistan’s leaders.
Such stipulations have pushed Islamabad to be a keen spouse with China in a bid to shore up its water provide.
China supplies technical experience and monetary beef up to Pakistan for a large number of hydropower tasks in Pakistan, together with the Diamer Bhasha Dam and Kohala Hydropower Challenge. Those tasks play a vital position in addressing Pakistan’s power necessities and feature been a key side of the transboundary water dating between the 2 international locations.
The use of water as a weapon?
With it’s contention with India and its want to concurrently paintings with Pakistan on a large number of problems, China an increasing number of sees itself as a stakeholder within the Indus Waters Treaty, too. Chinese language media narratives have framed India because the aggressor within the dispute, caution of the chance of the use of “water as a weapon” and noting that the supply of the Indus River lies in China’s Western Tibet area.
Doing so suits Beijing’ s better strategic presence in South Asian politics. After the terrorist assault, China International Minister Wang Yi reaffirmed China’s beef up for Pakistan, showcasing the connection as an “all-weather strategic” partnership and regarding Pakistan as an “ironclad friend.”
And in line with India’s suspension of the treaty, China introduced it was once to boost up paintings at the vital Mohmand hydropower venture at the tributary of the Indus River in Pakistan.
Development on the Mohmand Dam.
Pakistan Water and Energy Building Authority
Chinese language funding in Pakistan’s hydropower sector gifts really extensive alternatives for each nations with reference to power safety and selling financial expansion.
The Indus cascade venture underneath the China-Pakistan Financial Hall initiative, as an example, guarantees to offer cumulative hydropower technology capability of round 22,000 megawatts. But the truth that venture broke flooring in Gilgit-Baltistan, a disputed space in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, underscores the delicacy of the location.
Beijing’s backing of Pakistan is in large part motivated through a mixture of financial and geopolitical pursuits, specifically in legitimizing the China-Pakistan Financial Hall. However it comes at the price of stirring up regional tensions.
As such, the alignment of Chinese language and Pakistani pursuits in growing hydro tasks can pose an extra problem to the steadiness of South Asia’s water-sharing agreements, particularly within the Indus Basin. Just lately, the manager 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 course – it behooves India, China and Pakistan to interact in international relations and discussion. Such engagement is, I consider, crucial in addressing the continued water-related demanding situations in South Asia.
