No other country has ever managed to assume such unchallenged riparian preeminence on a continent by controlling the headwaters of multiple international rivers and manipulating their cross-border flows. China, the world’s biggest dam builder – with slightly more than half of the approximately 50,000 large dams on the planet – is rapidly accumulating leverage against its neighbors by undertaking massive hydro-engineering projects on transnational rivers.
没有一个大陆国家能拥有中国这样无可质疑的河流优势：既占据着多条跨国河流的源头，又能控制这些河流留往他国的水量。作为全球最大的水坝制造国，中国拥有全球5000多座大坝中的一半有余，同时还在通过在这些跨国河流上兴建大型水利工程来迅速增大对邻国的影响力。