[Tlc] L-borders

Mon Jun 1 07:20:16 PDT 2009

FYI.
Thanks,
justin

2009-0601 - China Briefing - China’s Borders: Laos

http://www.china-briefing.com/article/china%E2%80%99s-borders:-laos-643.html

China’s Borders: Laos

The Lao call them Jin, and since the late 1800s when groups of marauding Chinese on horseback called Haw Jin first arrived, they have been coming into Laos in search of fortune.

Southeast Asia has long had Chinese immigrants, and from Thailand and Singapore to Indonesia and the Philippines, many of the region’s wealthiest and most powerful families trace their ancestry back to the mainland. Former Thai Prime Minster Thaksin Shinawatra and former Philippine President Corazon Aquino are just two examples of this. While nationalism has hindered many of Chinese descent in countries like Malaysia and Indonesia from taking office, they long ago became the de facto merchants and bankers of the region.

Today, a new wave of Chinese immigrants is flooding south. Far from the rich and powerful families that preceded them, these Chinese come from the country’s interior, a location that has missed much of the economic transformation of China’s eastern coast. These cooks, laborers merchants and tourists are leaving behind their economically depressed regions, often for destinations even poorer. And this migration is helping to transform regional economies from Laos and Vietnam to the Philippines and beyond.

At the Kunming long-distance bus station in southern Yunnan Province, Chinese merchants and tourists crowd around a sleeper bus bound for Vientiane, the capital of Laos. The storage compartments under are already filled with boxes full of merchandise headed to the capital, and now passengers are fighting to load bags under bunks and into the aisles.

Run by a Chinese family in Kunming and Luang Prabang, Laos, a private sleeper bus departs from Kunming every afternoon at 5 p.m. bound for the Laotian border and Vientiane. Inside, the bus is divided into three rows of bunk beds, accommodating 33 passengers for the 40 hour trip. Passengers spend most of the trip lying down, with badly dubbed Hong Kong action flicks to help pass the time. After all the passengers have settled into their bunks, several more crowd aboard the bus, taking up positions on blue plastic stools in the aisles.

At the first gas station south of Kunming, trucks and busses wait to fill their tanks for the journey. The road, four divided lanes of limited-access black asphalt, cuts through mountains and across valleys, at one moment soaring almost above the clouds, the next in a deep ravine. The Kunming-Jinghong Highway is as much a testament to China’s rise as the Three Gorges Damn or the city of Shenzhen.

The highway comes to an abrupt end after about 10 hours, however giving way to a winding road that snakes its way through the southern Yunnan region of Xishuangbanna. With a new highway still under construction and not available, buses and trucks making their way into Laos are still restricted to this older passage. Though, it remains to be seen just how effective this expanded road system will be as once across the border in Laos, vehicles remain restricted to a road that is barely big enough for two cars to pass each other.

Immigration and customs for the Lao People’s Democratic Republic is located in the border town of Boten. The post has seen increased traffic in the past three years and now provides a visa-on-arrival service for those who failed to get a visa at the consulate in Kunming. On this trip south most of the Chinese on the bus have already prepared their documentation and hand over 4,000 Kip (approximately US$0.5) to the immigration officials to fill out their entry cards for them.

Several passengers are heading to the former royal capital and UNESCO World Heritage Site, Luang Prabang. As Wang Xiaofang, a tourist from Henan province explains: “It’s not just the rich who like to go on vacation. I’m heading to Luang Prabang because Laos is cheap to travel to.”

Mr. Wang and his companions are sitting around a table at a small restaurant that hugs the road heading south. BeerLao is passed around and everyone seems to be in a good mood, pointing out the differences between Laos and China and happily chatting about what lies ahead in Luang Prabang and Vientiane. The group has been forced to wait just past customs as several of the passengers on the bus as well as the driver failed to accurately declare goods for import. Lao customs officials question the driver attempting to ascertain the worth of the items on the bus.

Once trucks and busses have passed through the border post of Boten, Laos, they continue south on Highway 1 towards Oudomxai, the most important crossroads in Northern Laos linking routes to and from Thailand, Vietnam and China. As the junction of Highways 1, 2 and 4, Oudomxai straddles the China-Laos trade route and the markets, nightclubs and most of the hotels are all run by mainland Chinese business interests.

Further south, Highway 1 meets up with Highway 13, the great artery of Laos, running the entire length of the country. Because it runs through Vientiane, this highway is one of the two main corridors for trade between China and Thailand (the other running by way of Oudomxai through Chiang Khong in Northern Thai province of Chiang Rai). Still graded but not paved in parts just three years ago, the entire stretch of Highway 13 from Oudomxai to Vientiane is now completely sealed, and as it descends from the mountains of Northern Laos, it widens allowing for faster travel.

Goods flowing across the border from China to Laos are often transported on private bus lines, and the relative size of the customs house in Boten reflects the Laotian government’s problems with regulating imports and exports. Trucks bound for China are constantly pulling out of the Customs parking lot carrying Laos’ natural resources for the growing economic giant. On their way through the border, they pass trucks and busses heading south with cheap Chinese consumer goods, goods that a few years ago only the richest in Laos could afford.

As the bus finally pulls out of Boten – customs duties paid – more Chinese board, returning to Vientiane after a trip to the border to collect more goods to sell. “Life in Laos is very good,” says Chen Li, a Chinese migrant from Sichuan province who has set up a shop in Vientiane. “The Lao people are nice and it is easy to make money here.” What she doesn’t say is how her presence and that of the rest of the new class of Chinese merchants is changing the face of Laos.

To read the full version of this article, please login and download the June issue of China Briefing. If you do not have a China Briefing account, you may sign up for a complimentary subscription here: http://www.china-briefing.com/en/user/subscribe.

______________
Dr. Justin McDaniel
Dept. of Religious Studies
3046 INTN
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
951-827-4530
justinm at ucr.edu