On November 30, the CCP-owned Global Times disclosed that China is going ahead with construction of a major hydropower project on the Brahmaputra river. The Global Times said it had also learned that the project will be designed by the Chengdu Engineering Corp under the Power Construction Corp of China, or POWERCHINA, which is helping build the second Sichuan-Tibet highway. The hydropower project will have three times as much generating capacity as the world-leading Three Gorges power station. The official WeChat account of the Central Committee of China's Communist Youth League (CYL) said (November 29) that the project will be "to maintain water resources and domestic security".

(Comment: The project, part of China's South-North Water Diversion project has been under discussion since the time of Mao Zedong in the mid-1950s. It envisages conducting a small nuclear explosion for building a massive dam at the Great Bend on the Brahmaputra, or Yarlung Tsangpo (where the Brahmaputra turns into India from Tibet) and then diverting the river north to the Qinghai and Xinjiang provinces. The plans were first drawn by the PLA's General Logistics Department. Reports indicated discussions got protracted on the issue of whether it was safe to conduct a nuclear explosion and whether being so close to the border it would be secure, but those have obviously got resolved. The other parts of the project have been underway since then.)