The Emergnece of the Lancang Mekong Cooperation and its Impacts on the Mekong River Basin

The study assesses dynamics of transboundary water cooperation in the Mekong River Basin focusing on relationships between China and the Lower Mekong countries, namely, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Water diplomacy is deployed as an analytical framework to investigate the extent to which China's Lancang Mekong Cooperation (LMC) since 2015 has carved out a new geopolitical, economic, and environmental landscape. The LMC has become influential and competes with other cooperation mechanisms, such as the Mekong River Commission. China has shared more hydrological data and information and releases emergency water downstream for addressing droughts. These do not demonstrate China's shift toward cooperation but could be regarded as China's 'dressing up domination as cooperation'.