1 - Definitions and Problematics of Transnational Dynamics

Summary

Three mixed laboratories of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) — the SEDET (CNRS/Paris 7 University), the South-East Asia Centre (CASE, CNRS/EHESS) and the CEMCA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mexico) issued a call for projects concerning southern countries, opened in France by the National Research Agency (ANR) in 2007. The project, entitled “Transnational dynamics and territorial redefinitions, a comparative approach to Central America and Southeast Asia” (Transiter), was approved in 2008. This book sums up four years of research on the Southeast Asian theme, carried out thanks to scientific cooperation with the National Economic Research Institute (NERI) of the Ministry for Planning and Investment of the Lao Popular Democratic Republic. To study transnational dynamics in Southeast Asia, two areas were chosen: the Greater Mekong Subregion and the Malacca Straits.

TRANSITER: A COMPARISON OF TRANSNATIONAL INTEGRATION DYNAMICS IN MAINLANDAND INSULAR SOUTHEAST ASIA

The Greater Mekong Subregion, which came into being at the end of the 1980s, a decade characterized by the fashion for growth triangles or development squares strewn along the Asian Pacific seaboard, regroups the five countries of the Indochinese peninsula and two provinces of southern China (Yunnan was joined by Guangxi in 2004). The Asian Development Bank (ADB) took advantage of post-Cold War changes in national territorial strategies to promote this transnational integration programme from 1992 onwards, and has continued to support the most dynamic programme in East Asia. It proposed to base regional integration on the relaunch of trade flows that had been interrupted first by colonization, then by decades of war. The grouping of the five peninsular countries in ASEAN and the opening of borders with China enabled the 312 million inhabitants of the Greater Mekong Subregion to be brought together for the first time in this transnational programme. The restoration, over two decades, of the regional network via economic corridors, has now revived, in a new form, the old caravan route network which criss-crossed the peninsula in pre-colonial times. These corridors have since become so important that they have become the subject of rivalry not only between the peninsular powers, Thailand and Vietnam, but also between the regional powers of Japan and China (cf. Christian Taillard's chapter).