2.1What is the policy gap between the MRC and China?

The research on the relationship between China and MRC from legal perspective (especially international law aspect) is still rare in nowadays. Due to its headstream of 12 international rivers, China is the most important international basins country. What China has done and what China will do in the future over the international rivers definitely would affect the whole global water environment. It is difficult to define the customary international law---the rule of equitable and reasonable utilizations of international watercourse---without China's practice. The basis of the rule is to cooperate among riparians. But how to collaborate largely depends on the behavior of major international river basin countries. Although China has been a member of several River Basin Organizations (RBOs), and has signed some water agreements. Unfortunately, lacking transparency of this treaties and content of this cooperation, China still is seen as a country unwilling to enroll institutionalizing cooperation. That China still stands in front of the door of MRC till now confirms many scholars' judgments.

The policy gap between the Chinese government and MRC needs to be negotiated in a public platform. Due to the pioneering purpose of MRC, it has been the focus of the international community for some years. A great deal of money has been spent on the organization and many countries including 4 downstream member states and organizations have a great deal of hope on the RBO. They wanted the organization to play a more prominent role in Mekong cooperation. As the upstream state of Mekong River, China can't ignore the effect of the RBO and has become the dialogue partner in the succeeding year (1996) of the foundation of the MRC. Will China sign the Agreement on the Cooperation for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong River Basin and become an official member of MRC in the near future? Through an extensive literature review and related investigation, will show that that these hopes will be ashed. China will not make more progress related to MRC at least in the next two decades. This paper will study the reason why China takes a delay strategy towards MRC and analyze the existing domestic and international pressure that China has to face in this context. As a result, this paper will explore the reasons why upstream states are unwilling to participate in institutionalizing cooperation. Finally, suggestions as to what ought to be done to achieve the in-depth cooperation would be proposed. Exploring what that means would be good and all the other types of engagements they have had would be also be discussed.