Abstract
The revived plan to dynamite rapids and rocky islets in Chiang Rai province of Thailand as part of an Upper Mekong navigation improvement scheme allowing bigger tonnage Chinese cargo ships to pass more smoothly all the way to Luang Prabang in Laos has been folded into the wider visions of BRI. These rework and invert a geopolitical imaginary that has imperial origins in the Lower Mekong, when the French sought to navigate upstream from Indochina during 19th century explorations. Our paper examines the rock-blasting plans and shifting responses from and relations between Laos and Thailand in light of past and contemporary geopolitical narratives.
Introduction
This paper investigates the new geopolitical contexts of the planned and eventual stepping back of the blasting of rocks between Laos and Thailand along the Mekong River, in relation to China’s desire for greater navigation for cargo ships between landlocked Yunnan province in southwest China and mainland Southeast Asia in 2016 and 2017. China, however, embarked on clearing rocks and reefs in the Lao–Myanmar section of the river in the early 2000s, seeking to extend to the Thai–Lao section, until it was put on hold by Thai authorities who cited border security concerns in 2002 (Chuenudomsavad, 2004). China’s revived plans to blast half-submerged rocks and reefs in the upper Mekong, particularly at the Khon Pi Luang rapids 1 between Chiang Saen and Chiang Khong districts in Northern Thailand, saw the launch of the Development Plan for International Navigation on the Lancang–Mekong River (2015–2025) (see Figure 1). 2 This is to make the river passable for 500-ton cargo vessels (up from the usual 200–300 tons) from Yunnan to Luang Prabang in Laos, with the engineering survey approved in December 2016 (Cochrane, 2017).
Blast the rocks away for faster navigation! Islet blast site in Chiang Khong subdistrict, Chiang Rai province, Thailand. Source: Reproduced with permission from Chiang Rai Times.
Overcoming difficult geomorphology in the Mekong River to fulfil French Indochinese ambitions. Source: Photograph taken by Shaun Lin.
Remnants of Fort Carnot in Houay Xai, Bokeo province, Laos, built by the French around 1900, seven years after Laos was incorporated into French Indochina. Source: Photograph taken by Carl Grundy-Warr.
Chinese cargo vessels at Chiang Saen, the only riverine port between Thailand and Laos capable to handle up to 500-ton cargo vessels. Source: Photograph taken by Shaun Lin.
We observe that the briefly revived planned blasting of rocks, while not officially part of China’s recent Belt and Road Initiative, flows through one of six BRI’s economic corridors outside China which is the ‘China–Indochina Peninsula Corridor’. Additionally, on 1 September 2017, the ‘International Conference on Belt and Road & Greater Mekong Sub-region Cooperation’ was held in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai with the theme ‘Lancang Jiang-Mekong River: Rising Smart Corridor’. The Lancang–Mekong Cooperation was described by the Chinese representative from Yunnan’s provincial committee at the conference as ‘a new type of sub-regional cooperation mechanism based on the principle of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits [that] has become an important platform of the building of the Belt and Road’ (The Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China in Chiang Mai, 2017). Indeed, it is noted that ‘some Chinese engineers involved in the environmental survey speak of it as a part of the broader plan and it is consistent with Beijing’s Silk Road objectives’ (Goh and Marshall, 2017). Furthermore, the Thai government then approved the engineering survey in late 2016, therefore reflecting signs of yielding to China’s demands (Techawongtham, 2017).
In this context, the Mekong rocks and reefs become a critical geopolitical node in the matrix of Mekong environmental governance and economic development. The new geopolitical contexts surrounding the revived plan to clear the biophysical rocky environment of Khon Pi Luang rapids therefore offer an opportunity to investigate the broader impacts of China’s BRI conducted overseas on the ground. While it is important to understand the Chinese historical and contemporary narratives (be it from official or popular renditions) of BRI (see Sidaway and Woon, 2017), equally crucial to call for attention are grounded political geographies of the overseas responses towards BRI. BRI is, after all, much about creating and improving connectivity, particularly through economic growth corridors overseas for China, so observing the various responses to the symbolic aspects, and often times, material aspects, of BRI is critical in terms of understanding the evolving bilateral relations of the host country and China. While there are indeed several sources of overseas sentiments in relation to this rock blasting in the wider regional context, here we focus on Thailand specifically where responses have arguably been the most and varied.
Historical and present regulation and regionalization of the Mekong
Networks, flows and mobility of people and capital up and down and across the Mekong were vital to socio-economic and geopolitical interests in the basin long before the creation of national geopolitical boundaries, territorial sovereignties and the promotion of newly constructed notions of an economically assertive China. Mekong uplands were inter-connected by lively trade stretching from Sipsongpanna (Xishuangbanna) in current-day southwest China and Luang Prabang in current-day Laos for centuries (Liew-Herres et al., 2012). In more recent times, but before the river became an international borderland zone, local states and people were ‘regulating their connections with other places’ (Walker, 1999: 26). Thus, mobility through and across river, combined with upstream and downstream navigation for trade between riparian populations, has long defined the upper and middle Mekong.
Historically, attempts to turn stretches of the river into a more commercially navigable waterway were part of imperial geopolitical pretensions. French naval expeditions from the 1860s onward sought to find navigable waterways further upstream to connect with French Indochina. While geomorphology seemingly defeated geopolitical ambition as the ‘cataractes de Khon’ or Khone Falls (Siphandon, or ‘four thousand islands’ in southern Laos) with its treacherous channels and powerful flows proved insurmountable for unimpeded shipping (Osborne, 2000), the French built a railway on Don Khone Island for overland transport past the rapids in response in the 1890s (see Figure 2). In the 1880s, the French sought to claim the Mekong River’s east territories as part of Indochina, which was countered by Siamese resistance (Thongchai, 1994; Walker, 1999). This was followed by the Treaty of Peace and Convention between France and Siam on 3 October 1893, renouncing rights to territories on the ‘French side’ of the Mekong, creating a new river boundary modified by subsequent treaties, notably in 1926 (Office of the Geographer, 1962) (see Figure 3). 3 Essentially, this ushered in a new geopolitical era of carefully guarded sovereignty, inter-state regulations concerning trade along the river, replacing the more fluid and overlapping sovereignties of the pre-bounded kingdoms.
During the Cold War, the Mekong Committee, formed in 1957 under the aegis of the United Nations Development Programme, carried out navigational charting based on aerial photography and hydrographic surveying undertaken by experts from Canada and elsewhere (Mekong River Commission, 2004). This saw the United States (US) Bureau of Reclamation playing a crucial backer role for this new committee, and it planned large dams (still unrealized) and other economic development projects as the US sought to contain communism in the regional geopolitics of mainland Southeast Asia (Sneddon, 2015). Warfare in the region, however, put plans to improve the navigability of the River on hold. However, China, using five 50-ton vessels, sent a reconnaissance mission downstream to Luang Prabang and Vientiane in 1990, and in 1993, the Mekong Committee commissioned surveys investigating the upper reaches of the Mekong between Jinghong and Luang Prabang (Mekong River Commission, 2004: 15). This has intensified since in the last two decades as China seeks to turn the upper and middle Mekong into a water highway for trading vessels, surpassing what the French did with better technology and greater economic clout. One key contrast between these two nations’ interests in the Mekong therefore lies in the abilities to alter biophysical features to achieve geopolitical and geoeconomic aims. Nineteenth and early twentieth-century French imperial goals on the Lower Mekong were blocked by the sheer scale of rocks, reefs and rapids in the highly complex Siphandon riverine archipelago of southern Laos, whereas China’s regional ambitions for the Mekong in the form of trade and hydropower have been more successful in reworking the biophysical environment.
Geopolitics of geo-economic imaginaries
A range of political–economic forces influencing the river relate to different geopolitical eras (colonial, Cold War, post-Cold War). A series of geo-economic imaginaries surrounding broader geographical imaginaries of the Mekong basin and borderlands were developed in the late 20th century, such as the Quadrangle Economic Cooperation Zone and the Asian Development Bank’s plans for the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) (Dwyer, 2020; Fau et al., 2014; Glassman, 2010; Lin and Grundy-Warr, 2012; Sims, 2015).
China’s recent BRI efforts in the GMS have therefore built upon those earlier regional political–economic visions, yielding an intensified network of rail, bridges and ports that would enable the rapid development of a ‘China–Indochina Peninsula Corridor’ (see, for example Rowedder, 2020). Yunnan as a frontier in Southwest China is envisaged as a bridgehead to expand Chinese capital and labour to mainland Southeast Asia of the GMS (Su, 2013; Summers, 2013). It is clear that the bridgehead efforts are being intensified under the BRI. Yet although BRI ‘uses a panoply of rhetorical and visualization techniques to consolidate support for this new imaginary’ (Sum, 2018: 19) it has raised concerns. In particular, local environmental groups such as the Rak Chiang Khong Conservation Group in Thailand’s Chiang Rai province have been a vocal actor, opposing rock-blasting plans, raising environmental concerns about the depth of the river bed being too shallow, ecological and livelihood fears of wild capture fish habitats and fish breeding sites being destroyed (Cochrane, 2017).
Furthermore, the ideas of rock blasting in the Mekong for bigger ships to navigate downstream ports would require large-scale port development at sites like Chiang Khong and Luang Prabang. Currently they have very limited handling capacity when compared to Chiang Saen further upstream (see Figure 4) where most Chinese ships currently dock. Although there is an indication by China to upgrade Luang Prabang’s port facilities with Chinese aid, details remain scarce (Crispin, 2017). Thus, the political measure of blasting the rocks upstream seems to be lacking in coordination where port upgrades downstream to handle bigger Chinese cargo ships have barely started.
On the other hand, despite local environmental groups and non-governmental organizations protesting and even statistics showing that riverine export trade to China has been dropping (Rujivanarom, 2017), Thailand approved the engineering survey of the proposed blasting of rocks in late 2016. Arguably, this relates to a wider set of Thailand–China relations. Notably, China is helping Thailand to build the high-speed railway from Bangkok to Vientiane in Laos via northeast Thailand under the BRI. In the context of wider potential connectivity, Bangkok has downplayed environmental and local Mekong livelihood concerns.
Conclusion
A century and a half ago, it was the French who led an expedition upstream along the Mekong into China, exploring the navigation of the river for commercial opportunities between French Indochina and Yunnan. Now we see China coming downstream with grand visions of transforming the Mekong into a key artery for river commerce. These have developed over the last few decades, but have since enfolded into the wider connectivity visions of BRI.
It was reported that China stepped back the scale of rock-blasting plans after acknowledging their activities would directly affect Thai livelihoods in December 2017 (Bangkok Post, 2017). Subsequently, China announced to end further blasting plans (Bangkok Post, 2019). In early 2020, the Thai Cabinet formally called for cancellation of the Lancang–Mekong Navigation Channel Improvement Project, signalling a victory for local people and environmental groups (International Rivers, 2020). It remains to be seen however, if this will be a temporary hiatus or represents a shift in the ways that the Mekong will be harnessed to BRI. Either way, understanding the socio-ecological footprints associated with BRI is an urgent research agenda, as others have signalled elsewhere (Sternberg et al., 2017). They have become particularly visible along the Mekong.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.