Vol.:(0123456789) Discover Global Society (2024) 2:9 | https://doi.org/10.1007/s44282-024-00036-w Discover Global Society Perspective Dams, hegemony and beyond: China’s hydro‑stability in the evolving world order Porkkodi Ganeshpandian 1 Received: 14 November 2023 / Accepted: 2 February 2024 © The Author(s) 2024 OPEN Abstract Water has remained a source of contentious and cooperative politics among states since the Sumerian civilization. The field of hydro-politics, since its emergence in the 1990s, had taken note of dams as both a source of conflict between riparian neighbors owing to their threat to the life and property along the transboundary banks, and as a source of coop- eration through effective water and knowledge sharing and infrastructural development, promoting peaceful negotia- tions in good faith in these matters. In this regard, the narrative and practice of infrastructural development by the great powers in their weaker riparian states to enhance their growth has emerged as a new means to increase great power states’ power and influence in the international arena. China, in its race against the United States, has emerged as the world’s largest dam builder, having extended its construction footprints across many parts of the globe. As rapid industrial development and resultant climate change intensifies the hitherto prevalent water crises, China, through a spate of dam- building among other things, has ensured its water, and consequently food, supply through the accumulation of real and virtual water networks, in a world where basic necessities are gradually becoming scarce. Through a descriptive study, this paper attempts to answer the question of what the implications of China’s domestic, regional and global behavior of extensive hydro-infrastructural development are beyond the contemporary economic and political gains for itself. It argues that the objectives of China’s dam-building transcend short-term economic and political gains, as it attempts to ensure the possibility of China’s long-term hydro-stability in its quest to emerge at the lead of the evolving global order. Keywords Dams · Hydropolitics · China · Hydro-stability · Hydro-hegemony 1 Introduction Water has been a source of cooperation and contention in international relations since the ancient times. The earliest known water-based interaction, which incidentally was a conflict, was in Mesopotamia when Lagash deprived Umma of water through diversion projects [1, 2]. Similarly, water-based infrastructural development—particularly the ones that promote transboundary water management and cooperation such as dams—have also existed since times immemo- rial. For instance, the kallanai (grand anicut) built by Karikalan, a Chola king from the southern part of Tamil Nadu in the Indian subcontinent, was reputed for its infrastructural innovations and durability, as well as for improving irrigation in the neighboring regions, which thrived on agriculture and its consequent trade. Similarly, China’s recently unearthed Liangzhou flood-control dam relics, (5100—4700 BCE) is the oldest known flood-control mechanism in China, with a scale larger than most known contemporary flood-control projects [3]. Despite the political intrigues that hindered the * Porkkodi Ganeshpandian, porkkodiganeshpandian@gmail.com | 1 Centre for International Politics, Organization and Disarmament, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.