I'll address this question, and also use it to riff a bit on India-China geopolitics, both for context, and also to help seed Quora with more international issues.

From the Times of India, August 4th:

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/china...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday said China has given an
assurance that the dam it was building on the Brahmaputra river in Tibet
will not harm India's interest and "we trust" its statement.

"India and China are neighbours. It is in our interest to have
best possible relations with China...We have been assured (by China)
that nothing will be done that will affect India's interest," Singh told
the Rajya Sabha.

He was intervening in the reply to a question put to External Affairs Minister SM Krishna during Question Hour.

Singh said the issue of construction of a dam at Zangmu, on the
Brahmaputra river in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, has been
repeatedly discussed with China. It is a run-of-the-river hydro-electric
project which does not store water.

"We trust (Chinese statements) but also verify," he said, adding
China has given an assurance that the dam on the river will not in
anyway hurt India's interest.

Short reading (not really an opinion, you can take it from me that this is basically the fact, given the history): both the Chinese and Indians are politely lying through their teeth because neither is interested in figuring this out right now. It is a brewing conflict both countries have tabled till at least 2025 by tacit mutual agreement.

The Chinese aren't trying to re-route the rivers (that would be a silly James Bond movie plot). Long-term, they are primarily interested in hydro-electric power and more powerful water rights.

Singh is easily the smartest Indian Prime Minister ever, and there is no way he doesn't understand this.

Here's the 411 and why you can rest assured both sides are engaging in polite lying.

This has been a long-running border issue between the two countries. It is a completely natural consequence of the strategic situation in greater South Asia, and modern Indian Ocean geopolitics.

There's basically been a detente in Indo-Chinese relationships since the invasion and annexation of Tibet in the 50s (and the migration of the Dalai Lama and his entourage to India that followed) and the 1962 war where India got its backside handed to it. It was the wake-up call that made the Indian military and strategic establishment grow up, go nuclear, modernize and develop a healthy and eternal suspicion of the PRC.

That 1962 defeat of India was part military unpreparedness and part ridiculous political naivete on the part of the Indian political establishment at that point in history (Nehru, an idealistic Fabian socialist, was famous for his slogan, Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai, "Indians and Chinese are brothers," he died broken-hearted shortly after the defeat, unable to believe that his presumed communist ideological brothers across the border had betrayed him).

Since then, as in Taiwan, the PRC has been playing its slow, long waiting game, which it pursues in every geopolitical issue. More on why the PRC (not China the nation, but the autocracy that rules it) plays waiting games everywhere in a minute.

As part of this strategy for instance, it has been a constant supporter of Pakistan, which ceded parts of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir to the PRC. The PRC then began building the Karakoram highway there. This was the Western end of its strategy to develop Tibet by connecting it to the Chinese heartland, and via Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. Cultural sinification of Tibet has been proceeding ever since, and the PRC has been careful to keep the Tibet/Dalai Lama issue on the backburner, but has never ceded an inch.

This development strategy needs power, and the hydro-electric power potential of the Brahmaputra has always been the prize there, as it cascades down the Eastern Himalayas. It has been widely recognized for decades now that the PRC has its eyes there. This is not a secret. China knows it, India knows it, the US knows it, the Burmese know it (and use it to play India and China off against each other). Everybody knows it.

As a result, there has been an unresolved border dispute along the eastern border. In fact, the PRC claims portions of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which India of course denies. It doesn't help that that region is squarely in the ethno-cultural gray zone between India and China. The population is genetically in-between the two regions, as its culture (Burma was called Indochina at one point for a reason).

The detente itself was a sort of de facto mutual understanding that both countries had more important things to do. The detente strengthened further as both countries liberalized economically and made economic growth their main priority.

The complementarity in software and hardware also reinforced it. Sometime in the mid 2000's, Sino-Indian trade overtook US-Indian trade. Indian IT companies now have a big presence in China. Multi-nationals usually dream up regional strategies that take advantage of the complementary strengths of both countries.

To many who are not familiar with the region, this might seem like a signal that the detente will eventually soften into a friendly relationship where the border dispute and water issue will end up being resolved in a friendly way.

Not so. Both countries are fundamentally on a collision course for two reasons: both are desperately scrambling to secure their resource base in basic commodities like energy, mineral resources and food, and because the PRC simply does not play games that way.Economic friendliness does not make for military softening for the PRC.

For China, the main broader concern of relevance is securing supply lines to Africa.

India's main strength (now that the military naivete of 1962 is gone) is its dominant naval position in the Indian ocean, straddling all the major sea routes, and its participation in an SE Asian cooperation strategy. That along with the US-Korea-Japan coalition in the Pacific ocean, serve to create a two-front naval encirclement along which China's naval resources are spread very thin (they are barely a blue-water navy, let alone a 2-ocean navy. India has the easier problem of only having concerns in one ocean, and in a fairly contained region, where it has generally been able to project power fairly decisively, between the Straits of Malacca and the the African-Arabian Eastern seaboard).

India has also been trying to project "soft power" in the region, with less success, since SE Asia is more Chinese than Indian in terms of cultural influence. What it has going for it is the general SE Asian suspicion of Chinese hegemony.

China's move has been to prop up regimes in Burma and Pakistan and building ports that can anchor its supply lines to Africa. This is the bigger picture within which control and economic development of Tibet fit. Supply lines from Indian Ocean facing ports in Burma snaking their way up north along the Indian border, carrying commodities from Africa north, and supplies to Burma south. (See Kaplan's book Monsoon, for more details. If you don't believe this is happening, ask yourself why the obvious solution hasn't been tried: China simply using abundant Indian ports and the relatively safe passage to China possible via Indian roads/rail, instead of war-torn and unstable Pakistan and Burma).

This is one reason India is reluctant to move decisively to support pro-democracy movements in Burma. Pakistan being a non-starter as potential Indian ally, they are struggling instead to cozy up to the Burmese Junta to keep that country in play, so to speak, rather than firmly in the Chinese camp. If India moves decisively to support democracy in Burma, the rulers will immediately jump in the PRC's lap. Unfortunately, as a democracy with less ability to move large resources by fiat, they are at a disadvantage in giving the regime goodies and competing with the PRC in the carrots game.

If this all sounds ludicrously 19th century (and yes, it feels more like realpolitik than 21st century democracy cheerleading) you would be misunderstanding how the PRC fundamentally operates.

They are not only structurally set up to play a long-game (autocracy vs. democracy), but historically are used to thinking that way. Democracies like India and the US think in 4-5-year time-frames, till the next election. And even before democracy, India has never historically been united, let alone capable of acting with the long view in mind. China has historically been strongly centralized, with a normal planning horizon of decades. They're good at it.

What's more, they are actually seriously studying 19th century European politics on land and sea to inform their 21st century strategy in Africa, the Indian Ocean the countries surrounding India, and Tibet.

The US Navy is still the biggest player in the Indian Ocean of course, but it has been shrinking in capability rapidly. And frankly with the US heading towards bankruptcy, they really won't be much of a factor there. They may play a swing-vote type role, but in a slow-build-up conflict between China and India, they wouldn't be able to do much beyond the diplomatic level. In fact, if any conflict erupts in Asia, they will likely look to India and China to lead any intervention, just as they expected the EU to take the lead in Libya.

This is one reason the US (most recently in Obama's visit to the region) has been strongly pressuring India to take a more strident pro-democracy stance in Burma. If push comes to shove, the US would want India and ASEAN (rather than non-democratic China, for obvious reasons) to play the role the EU did in Libya. Makes ideological sense and humanitarian sense, but zero geopolitical sense for India or ASEAN. Neither would want to antagonize China.

So how will this all play out? There are two basic extreme scenarios. In one, the PRC wins. In the other, the detente eases into a friendly resolution of the water sharing between the upper and lower riparian regions.

It all depends on whether the PRC (not China) grows weaker or stronger with time. That in turn depends on how democratic forces fare in China.

Expect one of these to play out in the next 30 years.

Scenario 1

If the PRC is able to keep China politically stable as it grows, and keep the population happy with economic growth without political freedom, it will retain its ability to steer by, and execute, long 50-year visions. The status quo they are betting, will benefit them and gradually strengthen their ability to act, while it weakens democratic India and the US. The longer they can defer a conflict with India over the Brahmaputra, and with the US over Taiwan, the stronger their hand will be.

You just need to extrapolate current trends: through development, they will export the Chinese development formula to Burma (it is less likely that they can export it to Pakistan). As more commerce flows up through Burma, and as the Karakoram highway helps develop and Sinify Tibet, the entire region will start to get less enthusiastic about demanding independence and return of the Dalai Lama. Instead, they'll demand more and more energy supplies. In India, through continued tacit PRC support of Maoist insurgencies, and the guaranteed hapless bumbling of the democratic polity, the border regions will get ignored and grow increasingly resentful (things have already been that way for a while, at least in part due to the Indian Army's excesses in the region, in the name of dealing with secessionist movements).

Cheap Chinese goods will flood into the region via the well-developed surrounding territory, making them friendly to China. The Chinese, being way more subtle strategists than the Pakistani establishment, will never actively and openly foment trouble in the East as Pakistan did in Indian Kashmir. Instead, they'll just gradually create conditions that favor them using economics more than guns.

Eventually, they'll be in a position to negotiate either exactly what they want, or spark a military conflict to engineer a secession, where the odds are heavily in their favor.

Scenario 2

In this scenario, the PRC's ability to deny political freedom to its own people will grow increasingly weaker. As political concessions are made all over, Tibetian separatism/autonomy will increase in strength. China's efforts to develop the region will be resisted or even reversed. Pakistan will destabilize, making the western supply lines insecure, and Burma, seeing the writing on the wall, will smartly step over and effectively ally with India (and remember, political liberalization may erupt in Burma too).

If this happens, China's supply lines from Africa will be basically at the mercy of India and SE Asia. In order to negotiate secure passage rights, they will need to weaken their position over the Brahmaputra waters (with the development project being moot anyway if Tibet is boiling, and looking to India as a natural ally, given that it has been the expat home of the Dalai Lama for 50 years).

If this happens, and true democracy takes root in China, the ability of the Chinese to act on long time-scales will also collapse.

There is a well-regarded political theory that suggests that mature, liberal democracies don't wage war on each other, which has largely proved true (though based on a much debated limited data set). So there is a good chance that actual friendly people-to-people relationships between China and India can emerge. That would create the conditions for a friendly resolution.

In this best case, you could also hope that India, despite its democratic bumbling, actually gets its act together and replicates the Chinese miracle of lifting 300-400 million people out of poverty and into the middle class, and creates enough of a thriving economy that the neglected border regions can finally be given serious resources and support to grow, making those regions less susceptible to secession movements and Maoism.

Aside: fundamentals of the Indo-Chinese relationship

The Indo-Chinese relationship is currently the third most important bilateral relationship in the region (the first two are China-US and India-US). By 2050, it will probably be the most important relationship in the region, and probably the world, going by sheer population numbers.

So it is hugely important to the world that this relationship be healthy, friendly and mutually positive. Taiwan is more of an issue of pride for the PRC and a poster-child issue for the US. It is fundamentally less important in geopolitical terms. Though the India-China detente is a very quiet one (very few ordinary people outside the 2 countries are aware of the issue at all), it is far more important. If things go badly, the world will not be a happy place.

Despite my description of the current strategic situation, which may sound pessimistic and tense (almost a cold war), I am actually very positive about the fundamental potential of the relationship.

It has a ridiculously long history, much of it very positive. Though the primary Indian export, Buddhism, has been somewhere between an oppressed movement and unpopular at the political level, it has created a fundamental cultural commonality.

The Chinese of course, have historically viewed everybody else as barbarians. Indians are no exception (even Bodhidharma was regarded as an uncouth barbarian). But there's something really old and solid to build on.

On the Indian end, there has been a huge Chinese influence in everything from tea, paper and silk to the design of fishing nets used to this day in Kerala. Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee are hugely popular. "Indian Chinese" food is hugely popular too. Calcutta has had a thriving Chinatown for a couple of centuries. Meiyang Chang, an Indian-born Chinese, rocked the country by coming in at #5 in the Indian Idol contest, singing in Hindi (ethnic Indians are always hugely flattered when people of other ethnicities adopt their culture).



On other fronts, Indians being very practical and cheap, have readily adopted cheap Chinese goods in recent years (including Chinese made Indian goods like saris and even idols of Hindu gods for use in festivals... at one point the Chinese were sending delegations to study traditional sari weaving so they could get started manufacturing and exporting the stuff cheaply).

SE Asia is living proof that the two cultures can blend in relatively harmonious ways.

So overall, I think the Indo-China relationship has a lot of very fundamental strengths, and if we get lucky, it just may happen that the world's two most heavily populated countries will play nice with each other, instead of squabbling over water.

For the record, I am now a US citizen, so officially I am sort of neutral. Personally, I don't quite know how all this will play out. So I'd give both scenarios a 50:50 chance.

Indians and Chinese get along very well when they meet in the US in graduate school, and are able to completely ignore politics (by contrast, Indians and Pakistanis, who are ethnically much more similar, often have an undercurrent of tension when they meet in the US, and this doesn't ease unless both individuals make an active effort).