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”.

INTRODUCTION

The development of logistics services and communication technologies has revolutionized production and distribution processes, and has created the “global” market. It is within this competitive environment that shippers and consignees require efficient logistics services that can move their goods in the right place, at the right time, in the right condition, and at the right price (Banomyong and Faust 2010).

According to Fujimura (2008), it is therefore of great importance that regional linkages among neighbouring countries in Southeast Asia are strengthened in order to facilitate trade, enhance regional economic integration and develop logistics for better access to the “global” market. It is acknowledged that having an efficient logistics system in Southeast Asia can help not only support regional economic integration but also improve connectivity with the rest of the world (ERIA 2010).

In Southeast Asia there exist a number of subregional initiatives that focus on economic corridor development to help accelerate economic integration such as the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) or the Indonesia–Malaysia– Thailand Growth Triangle (IMT-GT). The purpose of this chapter is to present a comparative analysis of corridor development level between these two subregional initiatives.

The chapter begins with a general background description of the GMS and the IMT-GT in order to provide a better understanding of the context involved. The following section introduces the conceptual framework and explains the various types of economic corridor development. Section 3 describes the results of the comparative assessment while Section 4 is the summary.

BACKGROUND OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN SUBREGIONAL INITIATIVES

The Greater Mekong Subregion

The Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) is composed of Cambodia, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam, as well as Yunnan Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). In 1992, with the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) assistance, the six countries entered into a programme of subregional economic cooperation, designed to enhance economic relations among the countries. The GMS countries are illustrated in Map 2.2.

Waterborne diseases are caused by pathogenic micro-organisms that are directly transmitted when contaminated water is consumed or contacted. As a result of swimming in contaminated water, people often contract acute, but relatively benign, gastroenteritis with a short incubation period and duration (Cabelli 1982). In the flood season, there is a higher risk of infection due to more frequent direct contact with severely polluted water over a longer period. Infectious disease is a major health problem in many flood-prone areas, especially where infectious disease is already endemic (Few 2004). Infectious disease outbreaks of varying magnitude and rates of mortality have been reported following major floods in developing countries. There is some evidence from India and Bangladesh that diarrhoeal disease increases after flooding.

In this essay, we aim to characterize and quantify the human health risks associated with varying levels of exposure to pathogens present in flood water. In our analysis, exposure scenarios according to inundation levels are developed in which direct and indirect contact with polluted water is assumed to occur. We estimated the probabilities of gastrointestinal infection based on established dose- response relationships for the key pathogen present in the flood water (E. coli) (Haas 1989) (See Appendix for dose-relationship details.) The more water one swallows, the more one is exposed to the pathogens, and so the more likely one is to get sick. Since there are no studies estimating the amount of water swallowed by people in flood zones, we adopted the United States Environmental Protection Authority's estimates of the exposure levels of different age groups while swimming or wading. We also assumed that residents are not able to leave the area during floods. As these assumptions are untested, our results may be over- or underestimated.

STUDY SITE

Metro Manila (population 11 million) is the social, economic, and political centre of the Philippines. See Figure 18.1. It is also at the heart of the tropical monsoon climatic zone. Frequent flooding associated with typhoons and other climatic factors is a perennial problem, intensified by the city's being located at sea-level.

China is shifting its development policy towards creating a low- carbon economy and a more equitable society, departing from the rapid economic growth policy started by Deng Xiaoping three decades ago. Drastic changes in production and consumption are required to make development responsive to climate change and environmental degradation. Environmental protection and a transition to a low-carbon economy are imperatives with no leeway for China. In the coming decades, government departments will have to adopt new laws and regulations that guide changes in industry and the lives of the Chinese people. Efforts have been made in many companies to make their production processes and services greener. Green enterprises already exist and their number is increasing.

However, are the poor left behind in the transition process? Green jobs can benefit the environment as well as the worker. As most of the poor who are employed work for micro and small enterprises, it is critical to promote micro and small enterprises in a green economy, if the greening process is to be pro-poor. Also, it is likely that small businesses could provide green products and services for the poor and contribute to the local economic development. Green small enterprises would be promoted effectively if the economic, environmental, and social aspects of sustainable development are integrated.

It is a crucial concern of the International Labour Organization (ILO) to make the transition to a green economy by ensuring that the new jobs created in green enterprises are decent and socially acceptable. For the last two years, the ILO has been introducing the concept of green jobs to its three constituents — government, worker, and employer organizations — in China, and alerting them to the changes that will be coming in the world of work. At the same time, the ILO has tried to create new employment opportunities in emerging green industries. The ILO has been promoting the Green Jobs Initiative, which supports the process of a just transition for the workers who are affected by the ongoing changes in the green economy.

Poverty reduction and environmental conservation are the twin goals in economic development. However, the two goals can be in conflict. Since the poor are typically engaged in primary production and there fore highly dependent upon natural resources, environmental degradation undermines their means of subsistence much more than that of other people. Therefore, environmental conservation can reduce poverty. But the long-term interests of the poor can be at odds with their short-term interest. Since survival is the most important short-term interest, it is not a trivial conflict for them. The poor have limited choices and control over their future. Improvements in the environment may not even be seen positively, as they do not have better alternatives for income. They resist environment rehabilitation programmes because they often benefit from environmentally harmful livelihoods. This is a classic conflict between the collectively rational and the individually rational behaviour.

In China, farmers, livestock grazers, and forest workers are disadvantaged by the Natural Forest Conservation Programme (NFCP) in the dryland areas of Northern Shaanxi Province (Cao et al. 2010). The programme had successfully banned logging and grazing in the forest, causing the people around the forest to lose their source of income. Cao et al. (2010) also showed that the poorer the people are, the more they suffer from the forest conservation programme. The youngest and oldest, as well as the female, suffered most from the conservation pro gramme. They recommended that the government provide economic assistance to compensate for the loss of income. Salafsky and Wollenberg (2000) made a similar recommendation for people living near areas rich in natural resources, that is, to create alternative employment opportuni ties so that the people do not work in environmentally harmful activities.

An even better option would be to create employment opportunities that depend on the sustainability of the environment. This would make the micro view of the locals compatible with the macro view of the environmentalists.

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.

Due to their small size, Pacific Island countries are susceptible to the effects of climate change. The Pacific Island countries are likely to suffer in five areas. The first is their coastal protection, including their mangroves, reefs, mudflats, and sea grass beds. The second is their climate regulation, covering seasonal and decadal cycles (e.g., El Niño) and long-term processes such as oceans as heat and carbon sinks. Third is their environmental flows, involving river and floodplain services, livelihoods, soil fertility, and sediment deposition. Fourth is their biodiversity conservation, covering reefs, the deep sea, polar ecosystem, shelf seas, mangroves, floodplains, and ancient lakes. Fifth is the cultural services concerning coastal heritage, identity and spirituality, education and knowledge, aesthetic enjoyment, food, and culture.

Furthermore, the Pacific Island countries rely heavily on imported food. Every Pacific Island country imports most (70–100 per cent) of its food. Increasing food prices are making it more difficult to import food. More and more of gross domestic products (GDP) is devoted to food import. And local food production, both marine and terrestrial, is threatened by the rising temperature of sea water and soil salinization, both of which are caused by climate change, which has become the greatest challenge facing the world since the beginning of the twenty- first century.

In their effort to address these challenges, the Pacific Island countries have embraced sustainable development as a pathway for the future by becoming a party to various international, regional and national agreements. Preparedness is a concern in every small island country in the Pacific. In this essay we show some of the ways Pacific Island countries are adapting to climate change, especially for the poor.

EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Fisheries

The Pacific Island countries rely heavily on the oceans for food (fish, sea shells, sea grass, and others). With a rise in the temperature of sea water, an effect is seen on food supply. Since most populations are living in the coastal areas, this has a major effect on their livelihoods.

In 2010, the projected population of the Philippines was 94 million. Of this population, 18.8 per cent (5 million) live in slums. Of the slum population, 80 per cent (4 million) live in cities. Between 2000 and 2006, the urban slum population grew at an annual rate of 3.4 per cent overall, but 8 per cent in Metro Manila (Table 19.1). Metro Manila, which accounts for 37 per cent of the Philippines’ GDP and 13 per cent of its employment, is home to about 2 million slum dwellers. That makes up 16 per cent of the city's population of 11.5 million (2010). Metro Manila is a rapidly growing megacity. It ranks fourteenth among the twenty megacities of the world. Its population is projected to reach almost 15 million by 2025 (UNCHS 2010).

The incidence of poverty in the cities is 19 per cent. This is much lower than rural poverty of over 50 per cent (the national average is 32 per cent). Still, shelter deprivation is high in urban areas. It is in cities that disparities in living standards and access to basic services and infrastructure are most evident. We observe rich, well-serviced neighbourhoods and dense slum settlements existing in proximity to each other.

Households in slums are not necessarily income poor. About 32 per cent of the urban slum population in Manila (or about 1.3 million people as of 2010) — high compared to the overall poverty incidence — is poor based on national poverty lines of 20,688 pesos per capita (about US$2 in PPP 2010) (Table 19.2). More than 50 per cent live above the poverty line and can spend between US$2 and US$4 per day, but reside in poor environments. The slum-dwellers who live above the poverty line usually make minimum salaries or wages and work casually. They continue living in the slums because there is no alternative shelter in the city and “they cannot afford the cost of travelling from distant, less expensive, peri-urban regions for work and income earning opportunities in urban centers”.

The second part of this concluding section, after a first part devoted to the main spatial forms of emerging transnational development, deals with the role of the actors in the integration process. The subregions of Southeast Asia (Greater Mekong Subregion, GMS) and the Malacca Straits, intermediate areas between the world system and Nation States, involve various actors intervening at different levels: translational, national or local. “Top-down regionalization”, which leaders aim for, mobilizing international or world organizations, comes face to face with “spatial decomposition from the bottom”, i.e., on an infra-national scale. The myriad actors involved raise many questions which deserve to be examined in turn. The first question concerns the State's new position: is the State overwhelmed by these flows weaving a network of new territories going beyond the national context, or can it still take the initiative? The second concerns governance: have the new forms of transnational management accompanied the creation of these subregions? The third, which is dependent on the second, questions the connection between the strategies and skills of the different actors: complementarities, indifference or rivalry? The final question, which is central to this book, is whether there are different degrees of involvement between actors in the two subregions — mainland and maritime — in this study.

To deal with these four questions, the second part of the conclusion examines successively the role of supranational, national, and finally local actors in the process of transnational integration, and poses the question of the place occupied by new forms of mobility in the processes studied.

TRANSNATIONAL DYNAMICS AND SUPRANATIONAL ACTORS

The Asian Development Bank, a Central Actor in the Continental Section, but a Secondary Figure in the Insular Section

The first observation is the unequal role played by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in the implementation of the integration process in the GMS and the Malacca Straits region: whereas it is central in the first case, it is highly marginal in the second. Since 1992, the ADB has promoted and accompanied the creation of the GMS in order to favour increased commercial exchanges in the peninsula. Its involvement and commitment have played a central role in making this initiative credible both to the countries involved and to financial backers.

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).

Created in 1992 with the assistance of the Asian Development Bank by the five mainland Southeast Asian countries and China, the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) is officially presented as “a programme of subregional economic cooperation, designed to enhance economic relations among the countries” (ADB 2009). The will to concentrate on economic matters is not surprising in the regional context of economic renovation and opening of the early 1990s. It is also to be understood as a pragmatic approach, taking into account previous integration experiments (the International Mekong Committee and ASEAN for instance) which all show the necessity of putting aside political constraints to emphasize concrete realizations. The GMS mainly concentrates on trade and operates following annual sector-based financing plans supported by varying members and donors. During the first decade (1992–2002), the GMS gave priority to transport infrastructures and developed a “corridor by corridor” approach based on five economic corridors which retraced the former caravan networks within the peninsula (Taillard GMS, this volume). Since 2002, the GMS has developed a more integrated approach to corridors which became development corridors, by emphasizing the linking of infrastructure improvement to the signing of specific free trade and free circulation agreements. It has also reinforced its territorial approach by creating three new corridors and enlarged its fields to the creation of industrial and commercial zones, interconnectivity improvement, human resources building and environmental conservation.

As suggested in its name, this new “Three Cs” strategy — connectivity, competitiveness and community (ADB 2009), links economic dynamics to the development of a greater sense of community. However this link is not evident — is a sense of community a precondition or a result of economic dynamics? — and ASEAN experiments tend to show that it is highly difficult to go beyond decades of isolation and disputes. This communication emphasizes the role of territorial representations resulting from such contentious situations. Such representations are considered as subjective but long-lasting factors which vary according to the level (or scale) and the actors considered. My hypothesis is that these representations impact on regional construction and transnational territorial construction in various, diffuse but significant ways.

Malaysia is divided into thirteen states and three federal territories. Sarawak, located on the island of Borneo, is the largest state in Malaysia. It covers 124,450 square kilometres. Sarawak is richly endowed with natural resources, especially liquefied natural gas, petroleum, and rainforest. Its economy has historically been dominated by the primary sectors (agriculture, forestry, mining, and quarrying), mostly agriculture. But in line with the federal government's policy of economic growth through industrialization, the state government began promoting secondary and tertiary sectors in the 1970s (Kasim 1990). Sarawak was transformed from a poor backwater to a vibrant and industrializing state. By international standards, the level of poverty in Sarawak is now quite low. In 2009, 5.3 per cent (27,100 households) in Sarawak were found living in poverty and 1.0 per cent in extreme poverty. The national overall incidence of poverty and extreme poverty were 3.8 per cent and 0.7 per cent, respectively (EPU 2013). The incidence of poverty is higher in the rural areas.

Parts of the transformative process, such as the Bakun hydroelectric dam, commercial agriculture, and logging, have required clearing parts of the rainforest (Ichikawa 2007). Development projects not only caused a dwindling of the rainforest, but also the degrading of what remains. The primary economic value of Sarawak's rainforest has been as a source of income for the state through the exports of timber and its timber­based products. Timber industries have brought substantial earnings to Sarawak. In 2008, timber products constituted 9 per cent (RM7.9 billion) of the total export earnings of the major commodities in Sarawak though there was a slight drop in the total export earnings of timber products to RM6,698,067 in 2009, followed by a marginal increase to RM7,354,341 in 2010 (Sarawak Timber Industry Development Corporation 2011). The rainforest is a source of raw material for the residents of many of the rural communities of the interior (for rattan baskets and mats, and wooden furniture), and a source of wild boar and wild vegetables for food.

“Where there are wells and water, there are ethnic Chinese.” This was a common Chinese saying. Perhaps one can change it to the following: “Where there are Chinese, there are kung fu novels.” Before discussing kung fu novels in Indonesia (or cerita silat as they are popularly called), it is helpful to define briefly the Indonesian Chinese communities.

The ethnic Chinese can be divided into peranakan and totok communities. The former has lost an active command of the Chinese language while the latter still speaks Chinese. Peranakan Chinese have been in Indonesia for generations. Before World War II, those who were well-to-do were likely to have received Dutch education. The poor attended the Chinese schools (Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan), but generally used Malay or a local language as the medium of communication. Peranakan Chinese were primarily decendants of Hokkien. Therefore there were Hokkien words in their Malay, known as Bahasa Melayu-Tionghoa or Peranakan Malay. Even their names were also pronounced and hence spelt in Hokkien. As for the totoks, they were more recent migrants. Therefore culturally they are still Chinese. Nonetheless, those totok children who were born in Java have been Peranakanized, due to the local conditions which discouraged the development of a totok society. In the mid-1960s, all Chinese-medium schools were closed and since then this Peranakanization process has become more rapid than ever.

Long before World War II, Peranakan Chinese had started reading kung fu novels in Malay. These novels were either the translations or adaptations of yanyi xiaoshuo (historical romances), or the works of pre-war kung fu writers such as Huanzhu louzhu, Pingjiang buxiao sheng and Bai Yu etc. The popularity of the kung fu novels can also be seen in the publication of a kung fu novel magazine called Kiam Hiap (Jianxia) or “Sword-fighters” in West Java which lasted for five years (1931–35). Totok Chinese, on the other hand, read the novels in their original.

The geographic position and the peculiarities of historical development of Korea account for the ties connecting this country with the cultural region of the Far East. In the beginning of the Christian Era Chinese characters were introduced, and Chinese literature began to spread in Korea (at first it was Confucian classics, Buddhist sūtras and Chinese poetry). At that time Korean literature came into existence, and Koreans began to translate Chinese works into their native language using Chinese characters as phonetic signs. The name of the first translator of Chinese literature into Korean is known to us: it was Sŏl Ch'ong (seventh c.)who “… read the Nine Classics in the native language”. The translation activity increased especially after the invention of the Korean script in 1446. Not only Buddhist and Confucian works, but also pieces of Chinese poetry were translated into the native language and commented upon. For instance, in 1481 poems by Du Fu with commentaries were published in Korean.

Besides “high” Chinese prose and poetry Chinese fiction was circulated in Korea as well. This kind of literature was regarded as “low works”, xiaoshuo (sosŏl in Korean)by the Far East traditional society. The extensive circulation of xiaoshuo during the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries in Korea was connected with the interest in the private life of a man and his place in the world that developed in the Korean society of the time. This interest at first was satisfied by the Chinese romances and short stories. Kim T'aejun characterizes “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms” (Sanguo zhi yanyi), “The Water Margin Story” (Shuihu zhuan)and “The Pilgrimage to the West” (Xiyou ji)as the most popular romances in Korea. These works circulated not only in the original Chinese, but also in Korean translations. Translations of this sort are voluminous manuscripts, which probably existed in a few copies only. W.E. Skillend, the English investigator of Korean literature, in his “Survey of Korean Traditional Style Popular Novels” writes about single copies from the Former Palace Library; in other cases he refers to authors who have mentioned such manuscripts. Perhaps such translations were specially commissioned. For instance, Skillend informs us about Yi Chongt'ae (nineteenth c.)who translated Chinese romances by royal command. Unfortunately, I have none of those translated works at my disposal.