Water Dispute between Kazakhstan and China Intensifying

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 2 – Kazakhstan and China have been negotiating on regulating the flow of transborder rivers so that Lake Balkhash and other reservoirs in Kazakhstan do not dry up, but new reports suggest that they remain far apart with Kazakhstan experiencing falling water levels in key areas as China uses the water for the development of Xinjiang.
Russian analysts are “unanimous,” Moscow commentator Aleksey Baliyev says, that China’s withdrawal of water from the trans-border rivers … are a serious threat to the continued existence not only of Lake Balkhash” but other major Kazakhstan lakes and reservoirs as well (vpoanalytics.com/sobytiya-i-kommentarii/kitay-kazakhstan-problema-raspredeleniya-vodnykh-resursov-daleka-ot-razresheniya/).
And that in turn will exacerbate Kazakhstan’s relations with Russia and Tajikistan, both of which are talking about selling water to China rather than sending it to Kazakhstan and other water-short Central Asian countries (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/05/moscow-talking-to-beijing-about.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/07/tajikistan-to-sell-water-to-china.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/01/kazakhstan-should-blame-china-not.html).
Up to now, this has been a problem that the governments involved have sought to play down but now the Kazakhstan authorities may have no choice but to make it a central issue in their relations with neighbors or face serious water shortages for agriculture, industry and human consumption.
(For background on this long-running dispute, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/01/window-on-eurasia-china-said-killing.html,  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/11/window-on-eurasia-lake-balkhash-may.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/08/china-taking-ever-more-water-from-ili.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/12/kazakhstans-lake-balkhash-may-soon-die.html.)