China's Water Governmentality and the Shaping of Hydrosocial Territories in the Lancang-Mekong Region

Abstract

This paper examines China's water governmentality in advancing the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC). It attends to how discourses, used as a political instrument, are framed, justified and contested in the reshaping of international hydrosocial territories. China's official and popular discourses present the LMC as promoting multilateral politics, economic benefits and social integration, while they obscure polarizing politics, external interventions and regional conflicts. Using strategies of positive publicity first, top-down communication and mutual empathy creation, these discourses aim to deflect attention away from controversies and geopolitics in the region to construct governable hydrosocial territories. However, in a transnational context where the Chinese state cannot unilaterally control geographical imaginaries, alternative discourses depict China as a “hydro-hegemon” that poses threats to downstream countries. The discursive dichotomy reflects multiple ontologies of water and power struggles in international river governance, bringing regional stability and sustainable development into question.

Territorial Pluralism in China: Local Water Users’ Adaptation Strategies in the South–North Water Transfer Project

“…Ref. [27] discusses that China's water governmentality in advancing Lancang-Mekong Cooperation reflects its effort to construct a governable hydrosocial territory on a regional scale through the official and popular discourse of "promoting multilateral politics, economic benefits, and social integration". Therefore, understanding hydrosocial territories requires an understanding of their scalar dimensions and interrelations.…”

Beyond state politics in Asia's transboundary rivers: Revisiting two decades of critical hydropolitics

“…The 'up-scaling' of the Mekong Basin has been linked to an increasing role of international actors, specifically the pivotal role of China in Lower Mekong hydropolitics (Middleton, 2022;Wang et al, 2022), the role of the US in the construction of the Mekong as a region (Sneddon & Fox, 2012, p. 143), and the role of expertise from Europe in the activities of the Mekong River Commission (Käkönen & Hirsch, 2009).…”

“…Molle (2007, 361) explains, “As scale is enlarged, conflict resolution moves from local arrangements between irrigators or communities of one sub‐catchment to larger regional or national spheres. The ‘up‐scaling’ of the Mekong Basin has been linked to an increasing role of international actors, specifically the pivotal role of China in Lower Mekong hydropolitics (Middleton, 2022; Wang et al., 2022), the role of the US in the construction of the Mekong as a region (Sneddon & Fox, 2012, p. 143), and the role of expertise from Europe in the activities of the Mekong River Commission (Käkönen & Hirsch, 2009).…”

“…Instead, as Yeophantong (2017) argues, actors such as river activists can be key to shaping hydro‐development in the Mekong, Salween and Brahmaputra basins (see also Yeophantong, 2014 and on Thailand's fragmented flood governance Marks (2019)). In considering China's role in Mekong hydro‐development, Ptak (2017, 136) also suggests China is represented by ‘sites of contestation … and conflicts at multiple scales’ (see also Han & Webber, 2020a; Wang et al., 2022). This is particularly important as ‘it is all too common … for China to be viewed ‐ and often misunderstood as a singular monolithic entity’ (Ptak, 2017, p. 136).…”

“…2 Rather, scale is understood as produced and constructed; it ‘must be actively defined, delimited, and populated with goals and concerns’ (Lamb, 2014, p. 387). Understood critically, scale is a process rather than a static or fixed ‘level’ for analysis, and therefore scaling and re‐scaling can be approached as active processes that can be used strategically by a range of actors to enact politics (Bakker, 1999; Clarke‐Sather, 2012; Grey & Sadoff, 2003; Lamb, 2014; Middleton et al., 2019; Molle, 2007; Ptak, 2017; Sneddon, 2003; Wang et al., 2022; Yong, 2022).…”