Posts tagged Golden Triangle

Laos closes Casino in Golden Boten City

By Martin Saxer | March 22, 2012

Last May, following stories about Chinese gamblers held hostage at Golden Boten City, the PRC withdrew its support for the Chinese-run Casino exclave in northern Laos. Yesterday, the Lao government has definitely pulled the plug. France24 reports:

Laos is ending gambling in the former casino enclave of Boten on the Chinese border because of worries about crime, state media said Wednesday.
“There has been speculation over criminal activity in the gambling town, which forced the government to close the casino,” the Vientiane Times reported, without saying when the business was shut.

Donald Frazier (Forbes) was quick to note that the planned $3.8 billion casino complex in Cambodia will be more than happy to accommodate the homeless gamblers. Interestingly, however, the other Chinese-run Casino exclave in Laos, the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone on the Mekong, seems not to be affected by the closure of Golden Boten, according to Bikya Masr. The decision to close Golden Boten appears to have been taken after careful consideration. Bangkok Post cites the Vientiane Times:

The Laos government decided to act when the project’s developer began looking into selling the venture to another Chinese investor, the Vientiane Times said.
The new investors will not operate a casino in the area, the report said, but will instead develop the area into “a tourism destination,” it said.

The most interesting question is, of course, who is the new investor?

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Andrew Marshall on the the Mekong incidents

By Martin Saxer | February 1, 2012

In October 2011, a Chinese cargo vessel was attacked on the Mekong. Thirteen sailors died. Initial reports blamed Naw Kham, the legendary pirate and drug lord. Later it seemed that a unit of Thai special forces was arrested for their alleged involvement. A special report by Andrew Marshall (Reuters) now reveals that nothing is clear yet. The Thai soldiers have not been charged with any crime (they are still on duty) and USD 6 million worth in Methamphetamine pills was found on board the ship.

If you are interested in the story of a modern day freshwater pirate, the business in meth as opposed to opium, the Shan rebels, and the role of a Chinese casino and Special Economic Zone, read this fascinating piece.

Here is a teaser:

Opium and heroin are no longer the Golden Triangle’s only products. Since the late 1990s, secret factories in Shan State have churned out vast quantities of methamphetamine. This highly addictive drug is known across Asia in pill form by the Thai name yaba (“crazy medicine”) and in its purer crystalline form as ice or shabu.
It is now the top drug in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Brunei, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime reported in 2011. Naw Kham’s rise coincided with this explosion of meth use, which transformed the ill-policed Mekong between Myanmar and Laos — Naw Kham’s patch — into one of Southeast Asia’s busiest drug conduits.
Every year hundreds of millions of Myanmar-made methamphetamine pills are spirited across the river into Laos or down into Thailand. The trade is worth hundreds of millions of dollars — enough to corrupt poorly paid law enforcement officials across the region.
Narcotics are not the Mekong’s only contraband.
Other lucrative goods include: endangered wildlife such as tigers and pangolins; weapons, stolen vehicles and illegal timber; and, in the run-up to this month’s Tet celebrations, thousands of dogs in filthy cages bound for restaurants in Vietnam.
There is human contraband too. Illegal migrants from Myanmar and Laos are bound for Thailand’s booming construction or sex industries, while a constant stream of North Koreans journey across southern China and through Laos to surrender to the Thai authorities, who obligingly deport them to South Korea.

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Zhu Feng: China’s Trouble with the Neighbors

By Martin Saxer | November 1, 2011

A month ago, President of Myanmar Thein Sein pulled the plug on the contested Myitsone dam project in Northern Burma. The unexpected decision was widely applauded around the globe but left Chinese investors baffled. A few days later, 13 Chinese sailors were killed in an attack on two cargo ships on the Mekong river.

Yesterday, Zhu Feng (Deputy Director of the Center for International & Strategic Studies at Peking University) wrote a commentary for Project Syndicate, in which he takes the two events as indication of a general trend:

The Myitsone and Mekong episodes highlight China’s suddenly edgy relations with its southern neighbors. Its good-neighbor policy, it turns out, has steered China’s regional diplomacy into uncharted waters.

Indeed, China’s neighbors will not be reliably good to Chinese interests unless and until China begins to provide essential public goods –not just commerce, but also full-fledged regional governance based on the rule of law, respect for human rights, and regional economic growth. Otherwise, ruptures such as those at Myitsone and along the Mekong will recur, deepening China’s sense of isolation and panic.

The circumstances of the Mekong incident are not fully clear yet (Thai soldiers working on behalf of local businessmen?) and neither is the reasoning behind the Burmese government’s decision to suspend construction on the dam (read, for example, Nicholas Farrelly’s New Mandala post on the ongoing conflict in northern Burma and the role of the dam). Thus, I am not sure whether the two episodes sufficiently support Zhu’s conclusion. However, Zhu’s analysis of China’s strategic engagement in neighbouring countries and the risks Chinese companies are willing to take is interesting:

The dam’s Chinese investors, for their part, relied too heavily on the depth of the two countries’ bilateral ties, and so heavily discounted the project’s political risks. Their behavior also reflects the implied guarantee of official government mercantilism, as well as the complacency of China’s state-owned enterprises, which account for most Chinese overseas investment. Operating on the assumption that the government will back them – or bail them out if they fail – they can afford to be cavalier.

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