China ‘ready to share Mekong data’
China is ready to share data on water flows into the Mekong River, a longstanding request of downstream Southeast Asian countries, a Thai foreign ministry official said on Friday.
Control of the waters is politically sensitive, and the livelihoods of millions of farmers and fishermen depend on the river. A report published by a US research company this year accused China of holding back large amounts of water during a drought last year, a finding that Beijing has disputed.
China has no formal water treaties with the lower Mekong countries — Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam — and is currently only sharing limited data during the monsoon season on flows through the river that it calls the Lancang.
