This article was first published by Pacific Forum and is republished here with permission. The original can be found here.

At the 37th Asia-Pacific Roundtable: Crisis in an Interregnum Conference, held in Kuala Lumpur from 4 to 6 June 2024, scholars and practitioners from around the world addressed a range of conflicts and disputes in the region.

There were heated debates on Gaza, Ukraine and the South China Sea. China’s attitude and behavior on these international security issues were closely scrutinized at the roundtable as it is an increasingly influential world power. One important issue that was overlooked is the Mekong River, where the livelihoods of over 50 million people are at stake.

Since last year, escalating tensions and clashes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea have made headlines again, prompting ASEAN to issue an “unprecedented” joint statement on the issue before the end of 2023.

Although The Atlantic calls the South China Sea dispute “the most dangerous conflict nobody talks about,” there is another body of water that has received far less attention than it should. Noticeably absent from the roundtable discussions, however, was the issue of transboundary governance of the Mekong.

The Mekong, also known as the Lancang River in China, flows through five mainland Southeast Asian countries: Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. The river has been the subject of numerous controversies in recent years, many of which have involved China.

While the territorial disputes in the South China Sea have economic benefits, freedom of navigation and security, the rhetoric is mostly about asserting national sovereignty. On the contrary, what happens to the Mekong could directly affect the lives of many more people.

The Mekong River Commission (MRC) estimates that 80% of the nearly 65 million people living in the lower Mekong Basin depend on the river for their livelihood.

For a river like the Mekong that stretches across several riparian countries, there is additional political complexity between the riparian states of the river’s upper and lower reaches.

Because the river originates on the Tibetan Plateau and flows into the Indochina Peninsula, China may pose a far greater threat to its southern neighbors (intentionally or inadvertently) than to rival claimants in the South China Sea.

Despite the reasons for concern mentioned above, the Mekong is far less conspicuous compared to the South China Sea. What could be the reasons for this?

While the South China Sea conflict is primarily a conflict between China and Southeast Asian states that have a common interest in defending themselves against Beijing, the Mekong is a much more nuanced issue in which Southeast Asian states may have different interests.

Laos has the vision of becoming the “battery of Asia”. To achieve this, numerous hydroelectric power plants are being used, in which China and Thailand are investing. The electricity will be sold to Vietnam as well as to these two countries.

The highly controversial Xayaburi dam project in Laos has been criticised for its negative impacts, particularly on downstream Mekong riparian countries, including Cambodia. At the same time, however, Cambodia is – perhaps somewhat ironically – building several dams on its own territory with Chinese support.

The complexity of the Mekong leads to a less clear picture: the Southeast Asian countries are not allied against China, but rather there is an intertwining of different economic and security interests of different countries.

A more speculative factor has to do with the institutional structure of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

In a previous exchange between me and Filipino political commentator Richard Javad Heydarian, we discussed why the Mekong receives far less attention in ASEAN and beyond – even before the recent clashes between China and the Philippines brought the dispute to the forefront.

Heydarian noted that while ASEAN has existed for more than five decades and all mainland Southeast Asian countries joined before the turn of the century, ASEAN continues to place a greater emphasis on maritime Southeast Asia.

It is also the case that member states that are more concerned about the South China Sea, such as the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia, which is not a claimant but remains involved because of its interests in the North Natuna Sea. The Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia are more diplomatically prominent and can therefore express their concerns more clearly.

There are other, lesser-known forums where more focused discussions on the Mekong can take place. In addition to the MRC, there is the Asian Development Bank’s Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) framework and the China-initiated Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC).

Understandably, discussions on these platforms have received less attention in comparison. The countries most affected by the Mekong conflict, namely Cambodia and Laos, are economically heavily dependent on China and are therefore less vocal on the issue than the Philippines in the South China Sea.

Perhaps the most significant and regrettable reason for our ignorance about the Mekong is that it simply does not affect most people in the world.

The South China Sea is a key trade route for many of the world’s leading economies. The Philippines, a vocal claimant in the dispute, is a long-standing treaty ally of the United States.

The Mekong, on the other hand, has little impact on people outside the region, except for environmentalists. Of course, the issue also attracts less global attention – even though the Mekong affects a larger share of Southeast Asia’s livelihoods than the South China Sea.

Regardless of the reason for global disinterest, it is obvious that the Mekong has great geopolitical importance in today’s world, especially with regard to China’s foreign relations.

China has 11 dams on the upper Mekong, which have been blamed for exacerbating the 2019 drought downstream by blocking “vast amounts of vital water” from flowing downstream. China is holding the lifeline of many people downstream – and the world should be aware of it. In fact, the Mekong problem is only becoming more acute against the backdrop of climate change, which is already negatively impacting mainland Southeast Asia.

While the South China Sea dispute is an important issue that deserves the attention it receives, it remains crucial to prioritize the Mekong, as it will be equally important for the development of Southeast Asia and the region’s relations with China in the years to come.

Truston Yu ([email protected]) is a visiting student at the National University of Laos and holds a bachelor’s degree with honours from the University of Hong Kong. He has written over 30 op-eds that have appeared in newspapers such as the Diplomat, the Jakarta Post and the Straits Times.

This article was first published by Pacific Forum and is republished here with permission. The original can be found here.