The Dragon’s Green Mask

As Beijing lectures India on ecology in Great Nicobar, its own record in Tibet and the South China Sea tells a rather different story.

There is something theatrical in China’s sudden environmental concern for India’s proposed infrastructure project in Great Nicobar. Beijing and its sympathisers in India have warned darkly of ecological destruction, seismic fragility, threats to indigenous communities and irreversible environmental degradation. One would imagine, listening to these admonitions, that the Chinese state had emerged as the planet’s foremost custodian of fragile ecosystems.

This invites a simpler question: by what ecological authority does China sermonise to others?

Destructive Enterprises

For years, Beijing has undertaken some of the most extensive and environmentally destructive engineering enterprises in Asia. From the Tibetan plateau to the reefs of the South China Sea, China’s strategic ambitions have repeatedly trumped ecological restraint. The contrast between its rhetoric on Great Nicobar and its own conduct elsewhere is striking enough to merit scrutiny.

Consider first the colossal hydropower project China is pursuing on the Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet (known downstream as the Brahmaputra). The proposed 60,000 MW mega-dam is situated in one of the world’s most geologically unstable regions, near the tectonically volatile Namcha Barwa massif where the Indian and Eurasian plates collide with enormous force. The region has a long history of severe seismic activity, including earthquakes exceeding magnitude 8.

Reservoir-induced seismicity is a recognised phenomenon whereby the immense pressure exerted by billions of cubic metres of stored water can destabilise fault lines and trigger tremors. Landslides, slope failures and catastrophic flooding become ever-present possibilities in such terrain. Downstream nations, especially India and Bangladesh, face additional risks from disrupted sediment flows, altered hydrology and intensified flood vulnerability. If seismic fragility is an argument against development in Great Nicobar, it is difficult to see why the same principle should not apply with equal or greater force to China’s Himalayan mega-projects.

The contradiction becomes even sharper in the South China Sea, where Beijing’s environmental record resembles an assault upon marine geography itself. Over the past decade, China has transformed reefs, shoals and submerged formations into militarised artificial islands through industrial-scale dredging operations. In the Paracel Islands, particularly around Antelope Reef, vast stretches of coral ecosystems have been pulverised to create runways, ports and military infrastructure. Fragile reef systems that took millennia to evolve have been converted into strategic outposts within a few years.

Marine scientists have repeatedly warned that such activities inflict irreversible ecological damage. Dredging operations crush coral reefs, suffocate marine habitats with sediment and destroy spawning grounds essential for regional fish stocks. The plumes generated by cutter-suction dredgers spread over enormous areas, reducing water quality and choking coral polyps beneath layers of silt.

Coral reefs in the South China Sea sustain one of the richest concentrations of marine biodiversity on earth and underpin the livelihoods of millions dependent upon regional fisheries. Their destruction threatens food security across neighbouring coastal states, including the Philippines and Vietnam.

Ecological Apathy

Yet, Beijing has pressed ahead with remarkable indifference. In the Spratly Islands, China’s land-reclamation efforts have reportedly destroyed thousands of acres of reef ecosystems. Entire submerged reef structures have been crushed into sand and redeployed as foundations for artificial landmasses. Satellite imagery analysed by researchers has shown dramatic increases in sediment dispersal and measurable declines in marine biological health around these construction zones.

Nor are the dangers merely ecological. Artificial islands built upon unstable reef formations remain vulnerable to subsidence, typhoons and tectonic stresses. Structures erected atop dynamic maritime geology face continual risks from erosion and storm surges.

Scarborough Shoal offers another example of Beijing’s selective environmentalism. Chinese activities around the shoal have generated persistent concerns regarding coral destruction, habitat loss and destabilisation of sensitive marine ecosystems. Construction in tectonically active maritime regions magnifies the risks of structural collapse and even tsunami vulnerability. Yet these anxieties rarely appear in Beijing’s own discourse on sustainable development.

Instead, China increasingly cloaks strategic expansion in the language of conservation. Marine reserves and protected zones announced around disputed features in the South China Sea are presented as evidence of ecological stewardship. Critics, however, see them rather differently: instruments of geopolitical consolidation masquerading as environmental policy.

Environmentalism, in contemporary geopolitics, is no longer merely about conservation. It has become a language of legitimacy. States invoke ecological principles selectively, often less to defend nature than to constrain rivals while preserving freedom of action for themselves.

None of this means that concerns surrounding Great Nicobar should be dismissed. India’s planners must address legitimate anxieties regarding biodiversity, tribal rights and long-term sustainability.

But we can do without China’s monumental hypocrisy. How is it that a country that has reshaped reefs into military fortresses, undertaken environmentally hazardous mega-dams in seismic zones and inflicted lasting damage upon marine ecosystems now seeks moral authority over India’s developmental choices?

Beijing’s record suggests a state willing to subordinate environmental concerns whenever strategic imperatives demand it, while simultaneously invoking ecological virtue abroad.

The regrettable broader lesson is that ‘great powers’ seldom practise abroad the standards they demand of others. Environmental language, much like the rhetoric of human rights or international law, becomes another instrument in geopolitical competition. India should neither ignore ecological concerns nor accept lectures uncritically.

The proper response is not rhetorical outrage but transparent governance. It should ensure that the Great Nicobar project genuinely minimises environmental damage, protects indigenous communities and becomes an example of balanced development rather than reckless expansion.

That would be the most effective answer to Beijing’s accusations. The credibility of any nation’s environmental claims rests less upon speeches than upon conduct. And when the mirror is finally raised, China may find the reflection rather less flattering than the image it seeks to project.

(The author is a retired naval aviation officer and a defence and geopolitical analyst. Views personal.)