At the end of this year cars and container trucks loaded with goods from China and Thailand will finally be able to drive across a multi-lane bridge spanning the Mekong River (known as the Lancang in China). The bridge will connect Chiang Rai province in Thailand to Bokeo province in Laos, effectively linking China’s highways stretching south from Beijing and Shanghai to those coming north from Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok.
China’s regional strategy
“In 2012 China’s growth in trade and outward investment with the four other Mekong countries of Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia surpassed its trade and investment growth in ASEAN countries,” said Xu Ningning, chairman of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Business Council. “Greater growth rates will continue with increases in regional cooperation and win-win investment opportunities.”
China’s economic cooperation strategies towards its four Mekong neighbours has dovetailed nicely into a strategy that fits China’s current development needs. Liu Jinxin, a policy analyst and logistics expert says, “Unlike the US which leads the world in finance and IT, both high-value service-oriented industries, China is the world’s factory, producing goods to drive the growth of its growing middle class and serving export markets around the world. To survive, the Chinese 'factory’ needs inputs like energy and raw materials.”
But is an approach based on geo-economic cooperation a sustainable long term strategy for both China and its Mekong neighbours? The PetroChina pipeline cutting through Burma serves as a test of the region’s commitment to China’s geo-economic strategies. Not only does the Myanmar government have the power to choke a strategic energy flow to China, but a Japanese firm holds majority ownership of the Burmese port on the Indian Ocean end of the pipeline. Nationalist sentiments inside China could accuse the Chinese government of being held hostage not just by Japan but by Myanmar, thus threatening the stability guaranteed by China’s geo-economic approach.
China exports 'growth first’ model to the Mekong
In many ways China has exported its state-led, growth-at-any-cost development model to the Mekong region. Less developed countries stand to benefit economically from Chinese-backed infrastructure development projects like the US $7.2 billion high-speed railway from northern Laos to Vientiane and hydropower projects on the main stem of the Mekong in Laos and Cambodia.
However an even distribution of those benefits is unlikely and can only be realised once Laos and Cambodia pay off their colossal debts to China. China’s construction of eight hydropower projects on the upper Mekong River in Yunnan province has shown Laos that it can ignore protests from downstream countries about the negative effects of its dams.
This isn't the only environmental risk for China’s Mekong neighbours. In China hydropower developers can easily skirt environmental laws and produce misleading environmental impact assessments. Dr Zhou Dequn, a conservation biologist at Kunming’s University of Science and Technology argues that these kinds of malpractice have also occurred on Chinese-funded hydropower projects in Laos.
Hydropower threatens food security
Laos’ plans to develop eleven dams on the mainstream of the Mekong and more than seventy on its tributaries for energy export to China and Thailand. Whilst this will boost its energy resource portfolio, it risks jeopardising its natural resources, especially fisheries.
Eric Baran from the World Fish Institute claims that the Mekong is the world’s largest inland fishery with nearly 10% of the world’s entire freshwater fish catch. 60% of the population of Laos and Cambodia relies on caught fish for 100% of their daily protein intake. Mekong dams in Laos could cut off the natural migratory patterns of more than 110 fish species and translate into the loss of up to 800,000 tons of caught fish (42% of the Mekong’s fish catch) every year, creating a potential food security dilemma in Laos and Cambodia.
Moreover, China’s importing of hydropower from Southeast Asia is part of a push to reduce its carbon footprint by investing in renewable energy. However, to replace the loss of protein from Mekong fisheries, Laos and Cambodia will be forced to invest in industrial, carbon intense livestock raising; thus China’s carbon footprint will simply have been sent downstream.
State-led strategies stifles sustainable solutions
A major criticism of China’s state-led geo-economic strategy is that while it advocates security and interdependence between countries based on deepening economic ties, it fails to promote connections among the complex nexus of stakeholders in both China and the region at large. The exclusion of key stakeholders in policy discussions creates an uneven playing field that not only misallocates resources and leads to inefficiency, but also disenfranchises individuals and institutions who can provide sustainable solutions to regional challenges.
If China wishes to improve its deteriorating reputation in the region it will need to revise its geo-economic strategy. One element of this should be to promote the actions of a wider range of stakeholders. China should also demonstrate rule of law best practices to its Mekong neighbours, particularly when conducting social and environmental impact assessments of infrastructure development projects. Without these changes, China’s regional strategies and the sustainability of the Mekong region are at serious risk.
For the complete article, please see Chinadialogue.
