New Delhi, July 27 -- China is moving ahead with its plan to build a hydroelectric project on the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet. India should be concerned. But appropriately. Worries that Beijing will use water as a tool of coercion or weapon of war are likely overblown. What ought to concern us more are the environmental consequences in the short term, disaster risks over the longer term and what it tells us about how a more powerful China will conduct itself in the present and future.

This month, China's top leaders announced the formation of the Yajiang Group, a new state enterprise charged with the construction of this project in Medog county, just north of the boundary with India's Arunachal Pradesh, at an estimated ...