15 - Private Commitment: Marital Alliance in the Establishment of Business Networks at Hekou-lào Cai, Twin Sino-Vietnamese Border Cities

Summary

Decision-making policies, and economic development plans make up the changing framework in which people are moving and organizing their life in the emerging corridors of Southeast Asia. This chapter aims to bring the local and human dimension back into the picture by focusing on the Chinese actors in the building up of these zones, on their business practices and their personal involvement apart from financial investments. It provides a perspective on the social changes both affecting the implementation of economic corridors and resulting from them, since they bring together eclectic categories of population. Most of those, by various means, are trying to build or extend some economic networks to benefit from the implementation of these regional projects. I propose to draw our attention to one community who live scattered in and around the Chinese border town of Hekou, in Yunnan province: the community of Sino-Vietnamese couples. Many Hekou observers consider this community as an important element in the development of economic collaboration between China and Vietnam. It may symbolize the nature of the “possible” and the existing “challenge” of the reshaped space of pre-existing interactions.

Indeed, these mixed marriages are less the consequence of romance than pragmatic and conjectural alliances between individuals needing to develop their businesses and to improve their material life. As this is the case in many alliances, it is not considered to be a negative factor, but a personal and patriotic way of penetrating further into a land where local guidance is necessary in order to establish long-term collaboration despite obstacles. Besides, on a more personal level the individual commitment that marriage entails for each spouse needs to accommodate local discourses that interfere with the official intention to “work together toward the harmonization of relations between Chinese and Vietnamese communities” at large (as stated in such widespread street slogans). The various prejudices and discrimination that these couples embody remain a sensitive issue that needs to be addressed to understand the importance as well as the limits of their role in economic development.