[Tlc] TLC-borders and crossings

[justinm at ucr.edu]

See three stories about borders and roads below.
Thanks,
justin



2008-0331 - Xinhua - Cambodia, Laos sign MOU of border crossing pass, transportation

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-03/31/content_7893465.htm

Cambodia, Laos sign MOU of border crossing pass, transportation
www.chinaview.cn 2008-03-31 20:49:29

Special report: Premier Wen visits Laos, attends GMS Summit
PHNOM PENH, March 31 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia and Laos have signed a Memorandum of Understanding of border crossing pass and transportation while Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen paid a visitin Laos, Cambodian Commerce Minster Cham Prasidh said here on Monday.

The MOU was signed by Hor Namhong, Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, with his Lao counterpart, Cham Prasidh told reporters at the Phnom Penh International Airport after returning from Laos.

This MOU is very important for people of both sides because it allows them to be able to cross the border between the two countries with a border crossing pass for a limited period of time and they could make business, Cham Prasidh said.

Another MOU of transportation, which allows a limited number of vehicles of both sides to cross border, was signed by Cambodian Minister of Public Works and Transportation Sun Chanthol and his Lao counterpart, he added.

He said that Cambodia and Laos will also strengthen bilateral ties and traditional and friendly cooperation for a long term.

Hun Sen left here on Friday for Laos to conduct an official visit there and attend the third Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Summit on March 30-31.

His delegation includes Hor Namhong, Cham Prasidh and other senior officials.

Editor: An Lu
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2008-0401 - BKK Post - Highway to Kunming

http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/01Apr2008_news28.php

Highway to Kunming

The final link of the ''North-South economic corridor'' linking Bangkok with southern China was opened yesterday. Thomas Fuller of the New York Times reports from Luang Namtha, Laos

The Route 3 highway may not be familiar to many, but it is already touted as the road to economic prosperity for the region with China as the vehicle driving growth.
The newly refurbished Route 3 that cuts through this remote town is an ordinary strip of two-lane pavement. But 70-year-old On Leusa, who lives near the road, calls it ''deluxe''.

As a young woman she traded opium and tiger bones along the road, then nothing more than a horse trail.

Yesterday, the prime ministers of Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, Thailand and Vietnam officially inaugurated the former opium smuggling route as the final link of the ''North-South economic corridor,'' a 1,850 kilometre network of roads linking the southern Chinese city of Kunming to Bangkok.

The network, several sections of which were still unpaved as late as December, is a major milestone for China and its southern neighbours. The low-lying mountains here, the foothills of the Himalayas, served for centuries as a natural defensive boundary between Southeast Asian civilisations and the giant empire to the north. The road rarely follows a straight line as it meanders through terraced rice fields and tea plantations.

Today, those same Southeast Asian civilisations alternately crave closer integration with that empire and fear its sway as an emerging economic giant. China, in turn, covets the land, markets and natural resources of one of Asia's least developed and most pristine regions.

A Lao woman sells mangoes next to a row of Chinese shops at the newly dubbed Chinatown in downtown

With trade across these borders increasing by double digits every year, China has helped construct a series of roads inside the territory of its southern neighbours. The Chinese government is paying half the cost of a bridge over the Mekong river between Laos and Thailand, due for completion in 2011.

It financed parts of Route 3 in Laos and refurbished roads in northern Burma, including the storied Burma road used by the Allies in World War II to supply troops fighting the Japanese. China is also building an oil and gas pipeline from the Bay of Bengal through Burma to Kunming.

Taken together, these roads are breaking the isolation of the thinly inhabited upper reaches of Laos, Burma and Vietnam, areas that in recent decades languished because of wars, ethnic rivalries and heroin trafficking. The roads run through the heart of the Golden Triangle, the region that once produced 70% of the world's opium crop.

The new roads, as well as upgraded ports along the Mekong river, are changing the diets and spending habits of people on both sides of the border. China is selling fruit and green vegetables that favour temperate climates to its southern neighbours, and is buying tropical fruit, rubber, sugar cane, palm oil and seafood.

''You never used to see apples in the traditional markets,'' said Ruth Banomyong, an expert in logistics who teaches at Thammasat University.

China has blasted shallow sections of the Mekong to make it more easily navigable for cargo barges, allowing traders to ship cut-price apples, pears and lettuce downriver. Roses and other cut flowers from China have displaced flowers flown in from the Netherlands, making Valentine's Day easier on the wallet.

Traders now have the choice of shipping by barge, truck or both.

Overall, even before the completion of the road, trade between China and the upland Southeast Asian countries Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Thailand and Vietnam had risen impressively, to US$53 billion in 2007 from slightly more than $1 billion a decade ago.

People are on the move as well. Wang Suqin, the director of express services at the Kunming bus terminal, says Chinese tourists are eager to travel overland to Thailand. ''Every day we receive calls about this,'' Ms Wang said.

The bus service to Bangkok, which has not yet started, will take at least 24 hours. But that is not a deterrent, Ms Wang said, just part of the fun. ''We don't want to miss the scenery along the way,'' she said.

During a weeklong journey through the cities and villages along the route from Kunming to Bangkok, rice farmers, tea pickers, businessmen, traders and government officials expressed satisfaction and some excitement that a project decades in the making was nearly completed.

Chen Jinqiang, a Chinese government official from Xishuangbanna in Yunnan Province, said the road would help ensure that farmers get their vegetables and flowers to market, avoiding a problem he witnessed in the 1980s, when poor transportation left watermelons rotting in the fields. ''Even the pigs refused to eat them.''

But the road also excites old fears of the monolith to the north. Preecha Kamolbutr, the governor of Thailand's Chiang Rai province said it might exacerbate a ''Chinese invasion.'' He is particularly concerned for Laos.

''Chinese businessmen come in with their own capital, their own workers and their own construction materials,'' the governor said.

''I fear that in the future the Lao people might feel that they've been exploited. They will feel they've been invaded.''

For now, those fears do not appear to be shared by many Lao people. Residents of the sparsely populated Luang Namtha province said they welcomed visitors and were counting on an influx of Chinese, Thais and others to help raise their incomes.

Alinda Phengsawat, the head of tourism planning in the province, said the road would bring visitors to what has been a very remote part of the country.

''Maybe they will stay overnight,'' she said. ''That would be better than just driving through.''

Cash-strapped Laos is encouraging Chinese investment by handing out what it has plenty of: land. Deputy Prime Minister Somsavat Lengsavad has said the government will trade ''land for capital.''

The government recently gave a Chinese company a 50-year renewable lease for a large swath of prime land outside the capital, Vientiane, in exchange for the building of a sports stadium. In Luang Namtha, a Chinese firm has been given 30-year rights to build and operate what is being called, perhaps euphemistically, the Bo Ten Economic Development Zone.

The main draw so far is not the factories or warehouses typically associated with these zones but a casino, which is off limits to Lao gamblers.

''I went up there and everyone was speaking Chinese,'' said Pansak Gardhan, a Thai engineer helping to rebuild the small airport in Luang Namtha. ''All the signs were in Chinese.''

© Copyright The Post Publishing Public Co., Ltd. 2008




2008-0401 - AP - Laos highway opening completes all-weather Southeast Asia to China land route

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/04/01/asia/AS-TRV-Asia-Highway.php

International Herald Tribune
Laos highway opening completes all-weather Southeast Asia to China land route

The Associated Press
Tuesday, April 1, 2008

BANGKOK, Thailand: The landlocked country of Laos inaugurated a new highway that will allow a north-south land route connecting Southeast Asia and China to operate year-round, the Asian Development Bank said.

The opening of Route 3 Monday fills in the last stretch of road for what is supposed to be an all-weather route that at its full length connects Singapore to Beijing, the bank said in a news release.

The inauguration of the highway, which links China's Yunnan province with northern Thailand via Laos, was attended by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Laotian Prime Minister Bouasone Bouphavanh, Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej and Asian Development Bank President Haruhiko Kuroda.

The leaders of the six countries sharing the Mekong River ? Laos, China, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia and Thailand ? were in Laos on Monday for a summit meeting of the Greater Mekong Subregion bloc.

At the end of the two-day meeting they agreed on "a comprehensive five-year Plan of Action that aims to spur growth, reduce poverty, promote social development and enhance environmental protection in the subregion," the Asian Development Bank said.

Measures included a rail link joining Singapore and the southern Chinese city of Kunming.

The bank, a multilateral institution that finances development projects in Asia, said the completion of Route 3 "will create more business opportunities and provide people with easier access to social services."

"Before construction commenced on the new route, the highway was closed four months each year during the rainy season, limiting communities' access to basic social services, and impeding trade and employment opportunities in the region," it said.

Tourism in Thailand, Laos and China will also be boosted, it added.

The bank, as well as the Thai and Chinese governments, each contributed US$30 million (?18.9 million ) for the project, while Laos ? one of the region's poorest countries ? gave US$7 million (?4.4 million), it said.

The project to modernize the road network from the Thai capital Bangkok to Kunming was under development for more than a decade, the bank said.

International Herald Tribune Copyright © 2008 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com

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