As loyal readers of ExSE have probably noticed by now, this site, at its core, is dedicated to Mekong River and the people who are connected to it. Thus it seems odd that so little attention has been given to the Mekong Delta on ExSE. As is the case with most international coverage of the Mekong, the upper and lower reaches of the river are largely ignored in favor of stories about hydropower projects and the livelihoods they will affect. However, the challenges that the Mekong Delta (MKD) is currently facing and will face in the future are also serious. These challenges are directly related to global warming and are shared with other deltas, though the unique geography and ecology of the Mekong makes the consequences of climate change here even graver. Continue reading
Category Archives: SLIDER
Laos Agrees to Discuss Dam Project with Neighbors
Representatives pose for a photo at the June 26 meeting of the Mekong River Commission
Laos has agreed to open a discussion with neighboring countries on the Don Sahong dam, but stopped short of saying it would delay construction on the controversial project.
In agreeing to the prior consultation, Laos is allowing input from the farmers and fishermen who depend on the Mekong River for their livelihood. It would also provide time for neighboring countries and opponents of the project to conduct a more comprehensive environmental impact study.
The announcement was made on Thursday during a meeting of the Mekong River Commission in Bangkok. Representatives from Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia — all members of the commission — participated in the meeting. The agreement provided no provision for delaying the project before an adequate environmental study could be completed.
“Prior consultation does not stipulate any condition on continuing or not continuing” construction of the dam, Hans Guttman, the commission’s chief executive officer, told reporters. Guttman said the prior consultation should begin in July, with the process expected to take about six months. He said Laos did not offer to delay construction on the dam, nor did neighboring countries ask for a delay during the consultation period.
The Laos delegation did not release a statement or meet with reporters following the daylong meeting. Laos has begun preliminary construction on infrastructure at the dam site, despite strong opposition from Vietnam and Cambodia, who requested a 10-year moratorium on dam construction on the Mekong mainstream until further studies could be completed.
Earlier, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand stated that the dam must undergo prior consultation, as required under the 1995 Mekong agreement, to which Laos is a signatory. The Don Sahong dam is being constructed in the mainstream part of the Mekong River in the southern province of Champasak, nearly two kilometers upstream from the Laos-Cambodia border.
Opponents of the project fear the dam will block the migration of fish and cause a steep drop in the flow of water to those living downstream. Nonn Panitvong, an adviser to the Green World Foundation, said plans to build several dams along the Mekong, would transform the river, the world’s second-most biodiverse river after the Amazon, “into a giant freshwater pond”.
“That would be the end of the Mekong River,” he said.
Ame Trandem, Southeast Asia program director for International Rivers, called on neighboring countries to pressure Laos to delay construction until prior consultation is completed. “Neighboring countries must articulate to Laos their own intentions in what this process means, otherwise, the prior consultation process is likely to have missed the point entirely,” Trandem told ucanews.com.
Trandem said she hopes Laos proceeds with good faith rather than issue an “empty political statement”. “All construction should stop on the Don Sahong dam until a transboundary impact assessment is carried out and meaningful consultation takes place,” she said.
This article by Stephen Steele was originally posted here on June 27, 2014 on the UCA News website.
Filed under Cambodia, Current Events, Economic development, Energy, Laos, Mekong River, Regional Relations, SLIDER, Thailand, Vietnam, water
Laos extradites drug suspects to Yunnan
Editors note: This article was originally written by Cissy Yu and published on Go Kunming. It is reprinted on Exse in its entirety.
Yunnan has long been the country’s main entry point for illegal drugs. Despite increased interdiction efforts, international law enforcement cooperation and recent large-scale busts, it appears the province’s ‘Drug War‘ is becoming more costly and having only a small effect on the overall flow of narcotics across the border.
Last week, Lao police transferred five suspected members of a drug ring to Kunming in a display of cooperation between the two countries. Authorities originally detained the suspects in a joint police raid conducted on March 19, 2013, when a naval patrol seized more than 500 million yuan (US$82.3 million) worth of methamphetamines on the Mekong River.
China has been conducting patrols such as this with the help of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar since the “Mekong River Massacre” of October 2011. The attack, which killed 13 Chinese sailors, spurred Beijing to begin interdiction patrols along the river. Institution of the policy, although sanctioned by neighboring Southeast Asian countries, was the first time in three decades that Chinese forces have operated outside the nation’s borders without a United Nations mandate.
Although the drug lord responsible for the killings, Naw Kham, was sentenced and publicly executed in Kunming last year, illegal drug trafficking continues to run rampant in the border regions between Yunnan, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. Known as the Golden Triangle, the area supplies an estimated 60 to 70 percent of all drugs consumed in China. A United Nations surveyconducted last year reported that opium cultivation in the Triangle rose by 22 percent in 2013, largely driven by mounting demand from the mainland.
Yunnan’s 4,060-kilometer border with Golden Triangle nations presents a grim challenge for anti-drug personnel. According to Yunnan Net, 70 percent of methamphetamines confiscated in China last year were seized in Yunnan. Currently, there are 1.7 million registered drug addicts in the province, although the government acknowledges the actual numbers are much higher.
While heroin remains the most commonly smuggled drug on the border, methamphetamines — also known as ‘ice’ — are a fast-growing second. In Ruili, a border town infamous in the past for its heroin trade, methamphetamines now dominate the market. One dose of the crystals — known as bingdu (冰毒) in Chinese — reportedly costs as little as five yuan.
Yunnan’s narcotics officials, meanwhile, claim they have redoubled efforts to combat the drug trade. Provincial courts sentenced more than 5,020 suspects for drug crimes in 2013. Yet some officials have complained that the record numbers on trial have led to more lenient judgments. “A suspect who would get the death penalty elsewhere [in China] only gets several years of jail in Yunnan,” said a National People’s Congress deputy. “The judicial system should be punishing these people with an iron hand.”
Image: China Radio International
Filed under China, GMS, Health, Laos, Mekong River, Regional Relations, SLIDER, Yunnan Province
Hekou’s 600 million yuan “boondoggle”
Editor’s note: The following article was written by Patrick Scally and originally published on the website Go Kunming. It is reprinted here in its entirety.
The media in Yunnan, and around the country, is often overly fond of splashy headlines containing enormous investment figures. The articles that follow are generally paeans to a modernizing society and the wonders of Chinese-style capitalism. Failure is rarely chronicled. That is far from the case in Hekou (河口), which is currently receiving plenty of negative journalistic buzz due to a development project provincial officials have deemed an embarrassing and costly “boondoggle”.
At issue is a 270 million yuan (US$43 million) construction project on the banks of the Honghe River (红河). The China-Asean International Tourist Cultural Scenic Corridor had been under construction since 2011, when the government approved development on the site, a kilometer-long stretch of uninhabited land.
Designed to be a showpiece of the city’s economic growth, the enterprise has become an object of public scorn and a symbol of miserable urban planning. The entire riverside development is now slated to be torn down at a cost surpassing that of its construction. Conservatively estimated at 300 million yuan (US$48 million), demolition costs include the projected expenses of paying back investors and cleaning up the site.
Although the corridor was nearly finished, its 150 mixed-use shopping and business venues are currently being razed and will eventually be converted into public green space. The decision to halt and ultimately destroy the venture is a “policy adjustment” by the local government, according to a South China Morning Post (SCMP) report.
Concerns over poor planning and improper waste disposal were raised by local residents as the project neared completion. Complaints increased and the endeavor, which was hoped to complement and augment natural scenery, became a blight that authorities describe as a “negative influence” on the riverside.
Investors, shop owners and even low-level government planners were apparently surprised when the announcement came to dismantle the corridor. “It never occurred to us that a new order [for demolition] would come so soon,” an unnamed city planner told the SCMP. Locals have taken things more in stride, using a still-standing plaza for ballroom dancing in the evenings.
Hekou sits on the shore of the Honghe River and is joined with the Vietnamese city of Lào Cai by bridge. For most of the past decade, provincial developers have been throwing money at the area in hopes of turning the city into a major trade depot connecting China, Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries.
In 2008, a highway connecting Hekou County to major cities in neighboring countries was completed and work is well underway on a railway project linking Kunming to Hekou and, eventually, Hanoi. For now, however, it appears the 80,000 residents of Hekou will have to wait to see a venue that properly expresses their town’s importance as a regional trade hub.
Images: Xinhua
Filed under China, Economic development, SLIDER, Vietnam, Yunnan Province
Monsters in the Mekong
Construction of the Xayaburi Dam in Laos
It will be a giant, stretching across the mighty Mekong River. Standing 32.6 metres tall and 820m wide, the $3.8 billion Xayaburi dam in Laos could supply electricity to more than three quarters of a million homes in Thailand. And when it’s completed in 2019, it will be the most controversial power project in the region.
Since the plan was released in 2010 to construct the hydroelectric plant, geologists and environmentalists have voiced concerns about safety and the effects the mega-dam will have on neighbours Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. They have highlighted the risks of seismic activity in the area and the threat to the fishing industry on the 3,100-mile long (4,900 kilometres) Mekong River, which flows from the Tibetan steppes into southern China on its way to Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Continue reading
Filed under China, Current Events, Laos, Mekong River, Regional Relations, SLIDER, Thailand, water
Airport International Connectivity Ranking: China vs. US
![Intraprovincial routes in Yunnan [click map to enlarge]](http://www.eastbysoutheast.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Infographic.png)
Intraprovincial routes in Yunnan [click map to enlarge]
In this era of time-space compression, people, goods, and ideas move about Earth faster and in greater numbers than ever before. Human civilization has always revolved around nodes and flows, as ancient trading centers and trade routes demonstrate. What makes the era we’re in now unique is the degree to which transportation and communications infrastructure have accelerated these flows, erasing the physical distance between the nodes. But much in our interconnected world, for instance most commodity chains, remains out of sight under the surface. Only when a factory collapse in Bangladesh splashes the headlines are we reminded of the long and convoluted paths that stuff takes on its way from raw materials to the shelves at Wal-Mart. Continue reading
Filed under Economic development, SLIDER, Technology, Yunnan Province
Regional Roundup for the week of 6.23.14
Top links this week include international scrutiny on Thailand, beginning with the military junta. In addition to increasing pressure on activists, the government has cracked down on illegal labor, prompting a reverse flow of migrants back to other parts of Southeast Asia and Cambodia in particular. Thailand’s fishing industry remains under fire for slave labor and human trafficking problems, causing the U.S. to downgrade Thailand’s status and raising the possibility of economic penalties.. Major agricultural conglomerates Tesco and CP have so far refused to boycott Thai fishmeal producers.
ExSE FOCUS
U.S. Gives Thailand and Malaysia Lowest Grade on Human Trafficking | NYT — A State Department report released Friday ranks the two Southeast Asian countries with North Korea, Iran and Zimbabwe.
CP Foods condemns slavery and human trafficking in fishing industry | @guardianletters | Guardian — As chairman of Charoen Pokphand (CP) Foods, I want to confirm our position regarding Thai fishing boats supplying fish for the production of fishmeal to the feed mill industry, including CPF (The supermarket slave trail, 11 June).
Thai Police Detain 8 Anti-coup Protesters | Irrawaddy — Police in Thailand arrested eight people on Sunday for demonstrating against the nation’s increasingly repressive military junta, including a man who was dragged away by undercover officers for reading a copy of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” outside one of Bangkok’s most luxurious shopping malls.
Laos extradites drug suspects to Yunnan | GoKunming — Yunnan has long been the country’s main entry point for illegal drugs. Despite increased interdiction efforts, international law enforcement cooperation and recent large-scale busts, it appears the province’s ‘Drug War‘ is becoming more costly and having only a small effect on the overall flow of narcotics across the border.
CHINA
World Briefing: China: Police Kill 13 in Attack in Xinjiang Region | NYT — Police officers shot dead 13 attackers on Saturday who rammed a vehicle into the main police station in the region of Xinjiang, according to media reports.
Sinosphere Blog: The Latest Icon in Artistic Rebellion: A Cabbage | NYT — There’s a reason the Chinese authorities are not known for their sense of humor. They even stopped the artist Han Bing when he went to Tiananmen Square with the latest trendy object in the Chinese art world — a pet cabbage.
Leaning In … to Corruption | ChinaFile — It’s no secret that graft is an essential part of climbing the Chinese Communist Party ranks. Now, according to Chinese state media, ambitious female cadres are increasingly being caught taking bribes and trading favors.
From Half the Sky to ‘Leftovers’ | ChinaFile — “There’s very little evidence that urban women have turned their scarcity into economic gain,” former journalist and sociologist Leta Hong Fincher writes in Leftover Women, the result of three years voluminous research towards a Ph.D. at China’s prestigious Tsinghua University, which will be released on May 1 in the United States by Zed Books.
In Hong Kong, an Unofficial Election Draws Beijing’s Ire | NYT — More than 350,000 Hong Kong residents voted Friday in a nonbinding referendum on how their next leader should be chosen. The Chinese government called it “illegal and invalid.”
Chinese Government Tightens Constraints on Press Freedom | NYT — China announced restrictions Wednesday requiring reporters to receive permission from employers for investigative work and banning personal websites.
China’s Retiring Migrant Workers Have No Place to Call Home | ChinaFile — A generation of Chinese people from rural areas who moved to the big cities to find work is reaching retirement age, but many are finding they have been left outside the country’s urban pension system despite extensive reforms in recent years.
Tibet: Taming the west | Economist — WHEN it opened eight years ago, the railway from Golmud to Lhasa was one of the most ambitious rail ventures ever attempted. This September, an extension of the line will open from Lhasa to Shigatse, the first part of a further plan to knit Tibet into the rest of China.
REGION
In Push to Assert Rights, China Plans to Send 2nd Oil Rig to Waters Near Vietnam | NYT — Even as the two countries are in dispute over a Chinese oil rig in the South China Sea, Beijing is pressing ahead with new plans to assert its rights there.
To Bolster Its Claims, China Plants Islands in Disputed Waters | NYT — China is moving sand onto reefs and shoals to add new islands to the contested Spratly archipelago, alarming Vietnam, the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations that claim sovereignty over it.
China Sends Top Diplomat to Begin Talks With Vietnam | NYT — A senior Chinese official will meet with Vietnam’s deputy prime minister in the first high-level discussions since tensions between the countries escalated in May.
Fearing a Junta Crackdown, Cambodian Workers Stream Out of Thailand | NYT — In a chaotic exodus, tens of thousands of Cambodians have left the country, apparently driven by fears of a crackdown on illegal laborers by the military junta that seized power last month.
A Largely Indian Victory in World War II, Mostly Forgotten in India | NYT — The memory of the bloodiest battle of the war there, a 1944 encounter that cost the Japanese much of their best army in Burma, is complicated by India’s colonial past.
CAMBODIA
Cambodia blames Thailand as 220,000 migrant labourers cross border | Guardian — Cambodia has blamed Thailand’s military junta for a mass exodus of migrant workers that has seen 220,000 labourers flee the country and allegedly claimed the lives of several people amid fears of a crackdown on illegal labour.
The Cambodian People’s Party: A Deficit of Leadership | Diplomat — The party needs to allow its members to speak freely if it is going to make the reforms it needs to survive.
INDONESIA
Political Upstarts Work to Propel Change in an Indonesia Tired of Corruption | NYT — A small but growing group of political upstarts is emerging and its members seem united in a belief that the Indonesian public is fed up with the level of corruption in the nation.
A Contest to the Death in Indonesia | Irrawaddy — The Pasola festival on the Indonesian island of Sumba is a ritual confrontation of spear-wielding warriors on horseback that occurs annually. Two clans line up some 20 horsemen, who each attempt to prove their bravery by attacking members of the opposing clan on a sacred field.
LAOS
The disappeared | SEA Globe –The whereabouts of renowned Lao development worker Sombath Somphone remain unknown and the case has become a cause célèbre. Southeast Asia Globe spoke to his wife, Shui Meng, about the man behind the media attention.
MYANMAR/BURMA
Myanmar Camps Denounced | NYT — A senior United Nations aid official said Tuesday that in camps for the stateless Muslim group known as the Rohingya, in Myanmar, she witnessed the worst human suffering she had ever seen in such places.
Burma Gas Exports Worth $3.3Bln Last Year After Slight Drop | Irrawaddy — Burma’s earnings from natural gas exports fell in the last fiscal year as more of the resource was consumed domestically but shipments of greater volumes to China as a new pipeline comes up to speed are expected to boost earnings this year.
PHILIPPINES
US-Philippines to Hold South China Sea Naval Drill | Diplomat — Later this month, the U.S. and Philippine Navies and Marines will hold a joint drill near the Scarborough Shoal.
THAILAND
What Will Thailand’s Post-Coup ‘Democracy’ Look Like? | Diplomat — When democracy does return to Thailand it will surely be very unlike anything the country has seen before.
Thai Telcos ‘On Hold’: Interventionist Junta’s First Economic Casualty | Irrawaddy — Thailand’s telecoms sector is fast emerging as the first economic casualty of an interventionist junta in a country that has swung between democratic and military rule more times than any other nation in Southeast Asia.
The family | SEA Globe –When it comes to wealthy Thai families, none can compete with the Chirathivats. Not many can compare when it comes to business nous either. Busaba Chirathivat, Thailand’s queen of retail, sits down with Southeast Asia Globe to discuss family ties, shopping malls and equal opportunities.
Filed under NEWS DIGEST, SLIDER
The anti-Vietnam protest that didn’t happen
Kunming’s Nanping Jie Square, the site of Sunday’s non-protest.
The ringtone on my wife’s cell phone abruptly called us awake at 8:30am on Saturday. The caller ID displayed the name of one of my closest friends and colleagues in Kunming, yet I wondered why he was calling my wife. “Comrade, good morning,” rang out his thick Sichuanese accent. This was a standard greeting among my circle of friends, but calling someone comrade in China has long gone out of fashion.
“There’s something I have to tell you.”
So it turns out he spent the previous day at his workplace, a local university, holding meetings with top administration and security brass discussing how to prevent the university’s students from attending a protest scheduled for Sunday, the next day. He told me that a group of Vietnam war veterans from China’s 1979 punitive invasion of Vietnam received approval from the local civil affairs bureau and the local public security bureau to march on the Vietnamese consulate in downtown Kunming. The scheduled march was in reaction to the growing movement of anti-Chinese protests in Vietnam that left more than 20 Chinese, Taiwanese, and Vietnamese dead in the previous week.
The starting point was the city’s main pedestrian square at Nanping Street; the march would commence at 9am and finish at 2pm at the consulate. His call was a warning for me to lay low – for all foreigners to lay low – because foreigners, especially Caucasian foreigners could serve as a potential target for angry, nationalistic protesters. He was also calling to warn me to stay far away from the protest. He knew I had a penchant for observing and writing about protests in Kunming, and my actions in the past had landed me and subsequently him only by guilt of association in a little trouble with local security officials.
To help place the gravity of the situation squarely on my shoulders, he told me of how he spent the previous evening having meetings with the students under his supervision, pleading them not to attend the protest – even though it was a legal protest – for fear that it may turn violent or take a turn toward other issues that were suppressed and mulling around in the hearts and on the minds of disgruntled people in Kunming. In fact, his work group in cooperation with a successful commercial real estate form had arranged a 5 kilometer eco-walk scheduled for Sunday morning, but due to the protest he decided to cancel the event. His university and the firm apparently poured a good deal of money into the event so he was quite put out by the cancellation. “Right now, we will do what it takes to ensure stability at any cost.” I had heard those words too many times in the last 18 months living in Kunming.
His parting words before hanging up were also ones familiar to me: “Stay at home and have a good time with your wife.”
This season of South China Sea’s flare-ups and shenanigans is heating up once again. To provide a quick rundown of the last 10 days: China parks it’s billion dollar oil rig 150 miles off the coast of Vietnam near Da Nang; rams a few curious Vietnamese ships, super soaks other onlookers with high pressure water hoses; foreign ministries respond with sabers rattling; protests broil in Vietnam; Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese factories burn; people die unnecessarily due to this tricky, inane, orderless, yet extremely critical game of cartography, resource grabbing, and interpretation of the current world order. And to round out the week, the first organized civil response in China comes from….Kunming?
In some ways Kunming makes sense. The pathway of China’s 1979 spring invasion of Vietnam cut through southeastern Yunnan province into Vietnam’s Lao Cai province. The three month war was a tough decision for the newly installed Deng Xiaoping. He sought to punish Vietnam for its humanitarian invasion of Cambodia to take out the Khmer Rouge and install a new caretaker government, in some ways Deng thought this would help make good on his warming commitment to US-China relations. Many of the troops sent to Vietnam were stationed in Yunnan, Kunming specifically. Many did not return. In total approximately 70,000 soldiers and civilians died in the three month conflict.
Both sides claimed pieces of victory. In the end, China chalked up fewer casualties and proclaimed the incursion’s main purpose was to scare the Vietnamese before retreating. The Vietnamese army valiantly as always pushed back most of the encroaching forces as the PLA entered the provinces to the north of Hanoi. The caretaker government in Cambodia was not handed over to the Khmer people 1979. Officially the caretaker government left in the early 1990s, and some argue that the pro-Vietnamese caretaker government is still in power. To me a China’s claim to victory holds little water – just like its 9 dash line that lays claim to the near entirety of the South China Sea (which by the way holds a ton of water, fish, and most importantly energy resources.)
But then again there is little about Vietnam’s South China Seas claims that make much sense either.
From my experience interacting with locals, very few Kunmingers, and Chinese people in general, under the age of 50 know the story and context of the 1979 war. I was not surprised to learn that a group of organized veterans still operated in Kunming given that veteran groups from WWII were still active in Yunnan and much is done in this city to preserve WWII related heritage. But how many were there and how many would show up for the march on Sunday? An organized effort that received government approval and raised the alarms of state related institutions like my friend’s university would likely bring out at least one hundred people. Would they be able to rally more than 1000 Kunmingers under the intense midday sun similar to the anti-PX protests (not government sanctioned) of nearly exactly one year ago?
Would the protesters flip and set cars alight? Wait, Vietnam doesn’t produce cars. Would they target people who appeared to be Vietnamese? Wait, I won’t finish that sentence.
On Saturday evening, a crowd of Kunming’s expats gathered for the soft opening of a New York style pizzeria. The chatter was (sort of) abuzz with talk of the next day’s scheduled march and protest. Over the previous two days word of the march had spread, for better or worse, among the community via the popular Chinese social media app WeChat, and now the gathering enabled the conversation to go from digital form to the soon-to-be-obsolete vocal communication style characterized by eye contact and hand gestures.
“Did you see how close China’s oil rig is to Vietnam’s shoreline? It’s totally in Vietnam’s Exclusive Economic Zone.”
“What’s an Exclusive Economic Zone?”
“Yo, this South China Sea shit’s been going on for years. All these countries play around with each other like they’re still in middle school.”
“That 9 dashed line just showed up in on China’s official maps in 1954.”
“Why Kunming?”
“Maybe the anti-PXers will show up to the protest again and then it could get really ugly. Wait…maybe the Uighers will plan another attack? And do you think things will be different now that Kunming’s police forces can carry armed weapons? What’s happening to our city? This used to be a really cool place to live!”
“Those Vietnamese love to play games, they learned how from the Soviets.”
“I’m totally going to wear my bright red “Made in Vietnam” shirt with the big yellow star tomorrow.”
“Maybe that’s not the best idea.”
“What’s an Exclusive Economic Zone? And dude, where’s my beer?”
Those who watch the Sino-Vietnamese relationship closely know that the situation is not getting any better despite the rosy accolades of year-on-year bilateral trade increases, strengthened cooperation on the (lately not-so-successful) repatriation of illegal Uighur immigrants from Vietnam back to China, and a new high-speed rail and road network connecting Vietnam to China. Watching the relationship from Yunnan province only amplifies the growing crevasses.
Looking locally and outside of the South China Sea conflict, foreign direct investment between Yunnan and Vietnam is on the decline and according to the Vietnam Ministry of Industry and Trade office in Kunming, several key Yunnanese invested projects in Vietnam have been put on hold. Last year Vietnam Airlines suddenly cancelled its daily flight from Kunming to Hanoi. Two years ago you could readily buy Vietnamese Banh My sandwiches from food carts in downtown Kunming, and now none are to be found. Enrollments of Vietnamese nationals into Kunming’s university level Chinese language programs are on the decline and are eclipsed by students from Thailand and Laos. This spring, neighboring Guangxi province closed the border to watermelon imports from Vietnam which gouged prices at home in Vietnam and angered many farmers.
The list goes on, but I must mention that the yearly China-Vietnam Friendship Tennis Tournament which traditionally ushers in Kunming’s Southeast Asia Expo has been suspended for the last two years. Both sides suspect each other of stacking the line-up with semi-pro players and accuse each other of foul play.
Waking on Sunday morning, the day of the march, I pondered the deterioration of this relationship. It was clear that more were losing than winning, but how many of Kunming’s everyday citizens are directly affected by the recent cooling and would the protesting veterans be able to gather enough onlookers into their fold in order to make an impactful statement?
I also pondered my friend’s advice on whether or not to go observe the march – but only for a few seconds. With my smart phone charged to the max and ready to live-tweet the march as I had done for the past anti-PX protests in Kunming, I mounted my electric motorbike and made way to the protest zone, picking up a concerned friend along the way. He promised to help navigate the security arrangements citing experience recently gained on a week-long trip to Pakistan.
I’ve learned in the past 18 months that the signals of a protest in China begin to appear well before arriving on site, and given this sanctioned protest site was staged for the same site as last year’s initial anti-PX protest, I had a well developed strategy to lay low and observe from afar lest I be spotted and photographed by the local security apparatus. As we approached the downtown pedestrian square at 9:15 just after the march was scheduled to begin, we saw very little increased security presence. From 100 meters away it was easy to see the center of the pedestrian square was cordoned off by local police forces to create a space the size of two football pitches. Local police mingled in and out of the zone, and some middle-aged men sat in the shade of some trees on the periphery of the zone.
So far no sign of a protest presented itself. No banners, no t-shirts, no slogans, no face masks, just a nearly empty square. In fact, the most conspicuous aspect was the plain clothes policemen scattered around the square. Always slightly overweight, deep tan, same crew-cut, off-color collared polo, and the signature man bag containing who knows what – the uniform of the Chinese plain clothes policeman is always easy to spot. I also spotted a fellow blogger sitting in the shade inside the protest zone – his blond locks and European pedigree always stand above the crowd at Kunming’s protests in which he often finds himself smack in the middle of.
There still wasn’t any action, so my friend and I ducked into an adjacent shopping mall and rushed up to the a 2nd floor Starbucks to find a seat on a sofa beside a window overlooking the square. Needless to say the position of our perch made us feel more like spectators at a sporting event than at China’s first anti-Vietnam protest of the 2014 season. We were free to comment and tweet at will. No security forces were going to bother us there. My VPN was on line and the connection was kicking.
From our bird’s eye viewpoint, we observed a line of ten paddy wagons parked on the southern edge of the square. A small platoon of SWAT police in riot gear made rounds of the square. Still no protesters. A WeChat message popped up on my cell phone from the blond blogger sitting inside the zone. “Situation normal, just loads of police presence, no sign of protesters….Another Kunming couldn’t care less story.”
And that was just it. Kunming really couldn’t care less. We estimate that fewer than ten veterans showed up. Their t-shirts with Chinese flags gave them away. At about 10:30am, the veterans formed a half-circle in the middle of the square and were escorted around half of the square by uniformed police. Their march lasted less than a minute. A cameraman from the local television station sitting on a shaded bench missed the procession because his boredom turned to a brief chance to catch a nap.
At 10:45am, the cameraman picked up his bags and went home. Nothing to see here folks. By 11am the temporary fences were removed, and the pedestrian square exposed to the intensity of the midday sun once again filled with local shoppers making their way through Kunming’s commercial downtown.
I was relieved that nothing happened. Perhaps word came down from high for the veterans to cool their guns since the Vietnamese government was making good on its commitment to control the anti-Chinese movements and violence within its own borders. The last thing our little city needs is to have its blue sky reputation tarnished by another incident making the international news and filling the Sinosphere and the South China Seas with flotsam and jetsam.
Anti-Chinese Protests Shake China-Vietnam Relations
China’s oil rig, the Haiyang Shiyou 981, sits 120 nautical miles from the Vietnamese coastline. Photo: Xinhua.
Following the deployment by China of an oil rig in disputed waters between China and Vietnam, anti-Chinese riots have swept Vietnam, bringing Chinese-Vietnamese relations to their lowest level in recent years.
The demonstrations started shortly after China moved an oil rig, referred to as Haiyang Shiyou 981, within 120 nautical miles off the coast of Vietnam. This position is also 17 nautical miles off of the disputed Paracel Islands.
The Paracel Islands lie at the heart of the controversy over the oil rig. The Paracel Islands are a group of small islands in the middle of the South China Sea with no native population. Both Vietnam and China place historical territorial claims to the islands. Prior to 1974, the islands were controlled by the navies of China and South Vietnam. Following a naval battle in 1974, China took the whole group of islands from South Vietnam. Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975, the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam renewed its claim to the Parcels, and the dispute has continued ever since.
The dispute over the oil rig and the Paracels also ties into different interpretations by Vietnam and China over the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), of which both Vietnam and China are signatories. Vietnam claims that the oil rig falls within the 200 nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) granted to it by UNCLOS, and thus violates Vietnam’s territorial sovereignty along with UNCLOS. China claims that it falls within its territorial waters that are adjacent to the Paracel Islands it controls.
Regardless of the validity of each of the two country’s legal claims, one thing clear through all of these murky interpretations of international law is that the placement of the oil rig has raised significant anger on the Vietnamese side. Vietnam has declared that it will “apply all necessary and suitable measures to defend its rights and legitimate interests.” At the 24th ASEAN Summit in Burma, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung declared that China’s placement of the rig was “brazen”, “ gravely violates the international law”, and that China’s action was “dangerous”.
In response, the Chinese side has been equally provocative. The state-run newspaper Global Times backed “non-peaceful” measures against Vietnam and the Phillipines, said that Vietnam should get a “lesson it deserves to get”, and declared that “many people believe that a forced war would convince some countries of China’s sincerely peaceful intentions”. Meanwhile, the chief of general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, Fang Fenghui, declared at a press conference that it was actually the Vietnamese who were being provocative, that the Paracels were “”border territory which has passed down from our ancestors into the hands of our generation – we cannot afford to lose an inch”, ending with “We do not make trouble. We do not create trouble. But we are not afraid of trouble.”
The situation around the rig has only gotten worse since it has been deployed, with both sides claiming the other side has rammed its ships and used water cannons, while the Chinese have deployed ships to protect the rig, and have accused the Vietnamese of erecting barricades and fishing nets around the rig in order to impede the rig.
Meanwhile, the situation on the ground on Vietnam has become violent. Anti-Chinese protests have erupted all across Vietnam in response to China’s actions, and the protestors have targeted foreign factories believed to be Chinese, but have also turned out to be Taiwanese, Singaporean, Malaysian or South Korean. More than 400 factories were damaged by the mobs. The casualties resulting from the protests are still unclear with the Chinese Foreign Ministry confirming that two Chinese nationals had been killed, while other sources said that 21 people had been killed. Over 100 are believed injured. China has charted planes and ships in order to evacuate 3000 Chinese nationals in Vietnam.
Photo: Kham/Reuters
At the time of this writing, it seems that the protests have mostly calmed with over 1400 protestors having been arrested, and Vietnam having deployed massive numbers of security forces throughout the country. However, what’s clear is that the formerly cordial relations between the two states have been seriously damaged, with China’s Foreign Ministry declaring that the violent protests had “undermined the atmosphere and conditions for exchanges and cooperation between China and Vietnam” and that the Chinese side was suspending diplomatic contacts, along with issuing a warning against travel to Vietnam. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese Prime Minister sent out a mass text message warning people not to participate in the protests, but at the same time calling for Vietnamese to “to boost their patriotism to defend the fatherland’s sacred sovereignty with actions in line with the law”. As Vietnam continues to deal with China, the Vietnamese government will likely remember the consequences if it is seen as being soft on China by the Vietnamese populace. And unless China moves the rig, China has likely just given the US further reason to justify its pivot to Asia.
Trafficking of Women on the Burma-China Border & International Responsibility
Camp for internally displaced persons at Mai Ja Yang, Kachin State on the the Chinese border.
In recent weeks, warfare in Burma’s Kachin State has increased and is now making its way closer to the Burma-China border. While the international community has paid little attention to the Kachin conflict over the past few years, understanding its complexity is now more important than ever. Failing to do so could have dire implications on the lives of Kachin women, and on diplomatic relations in the region.
Kachin State is an ethnic area in northern Burma that has long suffered from conflict with the central Burmese government. In 2011, a seventeen-year cease-fire was broken, resulting in the onset of active warfare. In spite of ongoing attempts at peace negotiations, the Burmese government has been committing atrocities– including rape, arbitrary arrest and torture– against civilians. The region has been documented to be an active conflict zone resulting in one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. According to reports issued by the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO)—the political arm of the Kachin people– over 100,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) have fled to border areas of Burma and China to escape the fighting, and these communities suffer from a lack of basic necessities and little to no foreign aid. Additionally, as the Kachin Women’s Association of Thailand has documented, the trafficking of women into China’s neighboring Yunnan province as forced brides has become a growing problem.
Recently, I traveled to Mai Ja Yang, the second largest city in KIO-controlled territory to interview women and men living amid the conflict about the issue of trafficking. I conducted interviews with over 25 trafficking survivors, female soldiers, women’s organizations, lawmakers, cultural leaders, IDP relief workers and administrators from the KIO. I was hosted by the Kachin Women’s Association of Thailand, an organization actively working on the issue.
A child in the Mai Ja Yang camp.
My research revealed that gender discrimination, demand from China for brides due to the one-child policy and crippling conditions on the ground due to the military conflict within Kachin State contribute to the problem of trafficking. As former “forced brides” and others reported, the escalation of the military conflict has resulted in a sharp increase in irregular migration. Simultaneously, trafficking has become less of a priority for the KIO government, whose attention is focused on war strategy and the political process, rather than the empowerment of Kachin women.
Now, the Burma army is stepping up its attacks in a move that could increase women’s vulnerability to trafficking. As a recent article in the Irrawaddy Magazine revealed, last week the army launched an attack on a KIO military outpost near Mai Ja Yang, which shares its eastern border with China’s Yunnan province. Mai Ja Yang is home to a growing number of IDPs—men, women and children who have had to flee their homes after their villages were raided. Now, not only are these people’s homes destroyed, but their temporary camps are in danger, as well.
With fighting approaching the border areas, women living in the camps could become even more vulnerable. These women face insecurity in the form of food shortage, lack of infrastructure and basic sanitation. They also face circumstances of gender-based violence and rape. Additionally, lack of a means of income generation influences women to migrate to China to find work—a situation that leaves them vulnerable to labor exploitation and trafficking.
But the international community has been slow to respond to the conflict. As a recent Stimson Report revealed, the precarious nature of the US- China relationship has given American leaders pause in “interfering” in such a sensitive geo-political arena. Additionally, aid workers report having had difficulty accessing the IDP camps due to the ongoing warfare in surrounding areas.
Despite these cautions, it is in the interest of the Chinese, Burmese and Kachin governments to quell an increase in trafficking. Doing so would not only improve the lives of thousands of women, but it could prove beneficial for each country’s relationship with the United States. This is because the US State Department has made trafficking a primary agenda in its international policy. In fact, the State Department’s Trafficking In Persons (TIP) Report ranks every country in the world according to how well they comply with the US mandate against human trafficking. As a result, in recent years trafficking has become a number one priority on the US government’s agenda.
The policies associated with the US government’s anti-trafficking mandate are n0t always beneficial for the women they’re intended to help. As I discuss here, the US State Department sometimes gets it wrong, and trafficking continues to escalate. In the case of Burma and China, however, the US’s mandate could actually serve a useful—even diplomatic– function. Due to the transnational nature of human trafficking, cooperation between governments in the region is essential for the development and implementation of a robust anti-trafficking policy. Collaboration between the Chinese government and KIO, for example, is needed to resolve trafficking cases and bolster prevention efforts on both sides of the border. As wary as the US government is of getting involved in these relationships, the trafficking issue could potentially be an inroad yielding productive results.
Thus far, however, the only people seriously trying to combat trafficking along the Burma-China border are a handful of brave and talented activists on the ground. Mai Ja Yang is home to a number of women’s organizations dedicated to increasing the political and civil rights of women in Kachin society. These women work at great personal risk, while the Third Brigade of the KIA works to maintain their security.
But these organizations can only accomplish so much without international support. Instead of turning a blind eye to the conflict, Western governments should help them develop a robust anti-trafficking policy for Kachin State. Additionally, the US government should put pressure on the Burmese and Chinese governments to de-escalate the conflict in KIO-controlled areas. Failing to do so could not only exacerbate the precarious nature of diplomatic ties in the region, but it could lead to an increase in victims of human trafficking– the very people the US government says it is trying to help.
Filed under China, Current Events, ethnic policy, Myanmar/Burma, Regional Relations, SLIDER, Uncategorized, USA, Yunnan Province
