5 - The Participation of Yunnan Province in the GMS: Chinese Strategies and Impacts on Border Cities

Summary

Since 2010, China has undoubtedly been considered by most observers as a leading actor and sponsor of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) cooperation programme. A member of this programme since its inception in 1992, China has mostly increased its participation in the course of the 2000s, especially through greater involvement of the central authorities. The National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Finance have in this way co-authored in 2002, 2005 and 2008, three state reports on the participation of China in the GMS, in which they emphasized the importance for their country of cooperating with the States of the Indochinese peninsula in the development of transport infrastructure, the establishment of economic corridors, the facilitation of border crossing or the increasing of hydropower production.

However, the participation of China in the GMS is not limited to the central authorities. Yunnan Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, both bordering the Indochinese peninsula, are also two major Chinese actors. Although they did not have the power to negotiate directly and sign agreements with the central authorities of other Member States of the GMS, they are nevertheless crucial to the implementation of projects and the establishment of some strategies, which they often try to defend at the central authorities’ level. Crossing by the headwaters of the Mekong River (called Lancangjiang in Chinese territory), Yunnan Province was designated in 1992 by the Chinese central authorities for participation in the GMS. The integration of the Guangxi Autonomous Region is more recent and dates from 2005. It results from the desire of the Chinese central authorities to symbolize the more active involvement of China in the GMS. If this integration of Guangxi reflects a geographical expansion of regional cooperation, whose boundaries now largely exceed those of the Mekong River Basin, it raises the question of potential competition with the province of Yunnan. Timothy A. Summers (2008), for example, revealed that since the integration of Guangxi in the GMS, officials and academics from Yunnan are keen to present their province in their writings as “the main Chinese representative in the GMS” and as being “in the first line of cooperation”.