Chinese State-Owned Enterprise Investment in Mekong Hydropower: Political and Economic Drivers and Their Implications across the Water, Energy, Food Nexus

Water

Nathanial Matthews²  Stew Motta¹  Marko Keskinen³  Shokhrukh Jalilov³ 

[1] CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems, Vientiane 01000, Lao PDR; E-Mail:;CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems, Colombo 10120, Sri Lanka;id="af1-water-07-06269">1CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems, Colombo 10120, Sri Lan

关键词: China;    state-owned enterprise;    hydropower;    water-energy-food nexus;    greater mekong subregion;    political economy;    transboundary;   

DOI  :  10.3390/w7116269

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Over the last decade, Chinese State-Owned Enterprises have emerged as among the most active investors in Mekong Basin hydropower development. This paper uses a political economy analysis to examine the forces that drive Chinese State-Owned Enterprises to invest in hydropower in the Mekong Basin. We focus our analysis on the Lancang (Upper Mekong River) in China and in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), with an emphasis on Cambodia. The analysis reveals how powerful political and economic forces from within China and the GMS influence the pace, location and scale of investments in hydropower. These forces include foreign exchange reserves, trade packages and foreign direct investment, and political alliances. Combining the political economy and nexus approaches, we conclude that although policies from China recognize interconnections across the nexus, political and economic forces craft narratives that downplay or disregard these nexus interconnections and trade-offs. This in turn, influences how trade-offs and interconnections in hydropower development are managed and recognized in both local and transboundary contexts, thereby, creating potentially significant negative impacts on livelihoods, food security and the environment.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.