China denies plan to divert Brahmaputra, but Indians worried

China on Tuesday denied a story published in Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, widely picked up by Indian media, that it plans to build a 1,000-km tunnel – the world's longest - to divert waters of the Brahmaputra from Tibet to its arid Xinjiang region.

The denial came from the Chinese foreign ministry a day after SCMP said that Chinese engineers had submitted the plan to higher authorities in Beijing for approval, and were awaiting a nod. The report said that the project, which would also require environmental clearance, would cost $150 billion.

"This is a false report," said foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying at a media briefing in Beijing. She added that China would hold talks on issues related to the river with countries downstream, which are India and Bangladesh.

"China will continue to attach great importance for cooperation on trans-border water resources," she said.

Meanwhile, a top Chinese engineer who is building China's longest water tunnel in Yunnan province has said he "has not heard of" any plans to build a 1,000 km water diversion tunnel for the Brahmaputra River.

"There is no such direction from the central government, and I've never heard of any plan laid out for a Tibet-Xinjiang tunnel project," Zhao Shijie, chief engineer of the Dianzhong water diversion project in Yunnan, told the Global Times.

India has reason to worry because China stopped providing it with hydrological data about the Brahmaputra river flow which it had supplied in 2014 to 2016.

Although China has denied the diversion plan, the report helped alert the Indian public that Beijing has the power to drastically influence the flow of the Brahmaputra, observers said. New Delhi is usually reluctant to discuss dangers for downstream areas as China controls the river's flow.

China had assured India in 2010 that it would not build large storage dams that could pose serious risks to India's northeast, and merely focus on constructing run-of-the-river dams for generating hydroelectricity. It has built a 510 mw dam at Zangmu area of Tibet and begun work on three more dams on the river.

Environmentalists have often expressed concern that the dams can seriously hamper the river's ecosystem.