Part 3/6:
The Western route of the South-North Water Transfer Project is perhaps the most ambitious and the least well-defined. It involves the construction of a new artificial river, the "Red Flag River," which will divert water from the ecologically fragile Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to the isolated regions of Xinjiang and Qinghai in the northwest.
This endeavor faces several daunting obstacles. The sheer scale of the project, spanning hundreds of kilometers across diverse and rugged terrain, presents immense engineering challenges. Moreover, the disruption of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau's water supply could have severe environmental consequences, potentially impacting the flow of transnational rivers like the Mekong and the Brahmaputra.