INTRODUCTION

We met the naiban (village head) on a cool morning near his field hut, at the foot of the hills surrounding Ban Homphou, Houaphan province, Laos. The hut overlooked paddy fields to which the naiban's wife was piping water from the nearby stream, a tributary of the Nam Ma, enabling them to produce two rice crops per year, as with the handful of other households in the village with paddy land. This provided his family with about 20 sacks of rice for consumption, but much of the limited paddy area in the village had been damaged by heavy erosion further up the mountain slopes during the previous rainy season, resulting from consecutive seasons of monoculture maize. The loss of paddy land had contributed to a general expansion of upland rice and maize in the village, to compensate for lost wet-rice production, signifying the extent to which the commodity crop of maize had become insinuated within formerly subsistence-oriented livelihoods. The first job of the day was to sharpen the “pa” (Figure 5.1), hooked machetes we then used to clear a maize field on the hillside above us. The field was covered with thick brush, as the naiban planted the land with maize every second year with a one-year fallow, which he found marginally more productive than continuous cropping. As we worked, the naiban spoke of how many households in the village had become increasingly reliant on maize: “The main product here is maize now, if people have to stop growing maize, they don't know what to do.”

This chapter examines the circumstances behind the initiation of commercial maize in the mid-2000s in two villages near the mountainous border between Houaphan province, Laos and Son La province, Vietnam, upon which the naiban and households had come to consider themselves dependent by the time of this research. The analysis that follows was informed throughout by a multi-sited study conducted from 2016 to 2018, comprising a household component in the two study villages, with periods of participant observation throughout the maize production cycle, random-sampled (n=30 per village) household surveys, purposive-sampled key informant interviews (nineteen per village) and gender-specific focus group discussions (three per village).

INTRODUCTION

China's overseas investments have significantly shaped resource frontiers in Cambodia. Resource frontiers here refer to “spaces of capitalist transition, where new forms of social property relations and systems of legality are rapidly established in response to market imperatives” (Barney 2009, p. 146). Exploiting new frontiers of land and natural resources are the key sources of economic development. The process of economic development is not just about allocating scarce resources but also about obtaining and developing new frontiers of natural resources. In this connection, “frontier-based development is the process of exploiting or converting new sources of relatively abundant resources for production purposes” (Barbier 2011, p. 7). Extractive and productive transformations are the makings of new Asian resource frontiers called “frontier assemblages”, referring to “the intertwined materialities, actors, cultural logics, spatial dynamics, ecologies, and political-economic processes that produce particular places as resource frontiers” (Cons and Eilenberg 2019, p. 2).

Systemic transformation is defined as the drastic changes in social, economic, natural, political and governance landscapes. This chapter provides an initial qualitative assessment of the impacts of Chinese investments on systemic transformation in Cambodia. The chapter has three main sections, namely, enabling factors, perceived impacts of the Chinese investments, and local governance issues. Sihanoukville is used as a case study to demonstrate the impacts of Chinese investments on local governance. It argues that the influx of Chinese investments to Cambodia—in both extractive and productive sectors—over the past decade has shaped resource frontiers in many ways as they generate cross-sectoral impacts on the Cambodian economy, society, environment, politics and governance. Agriculture, manufacturing, infrastructure and tourism are the main investment sectors. While Chinese investments present huge material opportunities, they also disrupt local livelihoods and the environment and transform local governance at varying speeds and magnitude.

ENABLING FACTORS

Foreign direct investment (FDI) plays a critical role in socio-economic development in Cambodia. Peace, macroeconomic stability, political predictability, resource endowment, relatively cheap labour forces, and gradual improvement of investment climate together with governance reforms and gradual economic diversification have enabled Cambodia to attract foreign investments. For instance, at the Government–Private Sector Forum held in Phnom Penh in March 2019, the government laid out new commitments and concrete reforms to reduce the cost of production and logistics (Chheang 2019).

INTRODUCTION

With increasing foreign direct investment (FDI) flow from China, Myanmar's economic growth is depending more and more on Chinese investment. According to FDI data for 1988–2018, China is clearly the number one foreign investor in Myanmar (see as well Mierzejewski, this volume and 2021). Even though the investments coming from China into Myanmar are beneficial in many respects, they entail some major problems. Those are exemplified by the series of strikes that broke out related to three major development projects: The Letpadaungtaung copper mine project, the gas pipeline project, and the Myitsone dam project. As the latter two had been contracted by the former military government before the drafting of the 2008 Constitution, no impact assessments had been conducted and transparency was lacking. As the political reforms that ensued the passage of the 2008 Constitution have initially appeared successful, Myanmar people hoped to move forward in building a democratic nation as guaranteed by the Constitution. They aspire to participate in the decision-making concerning both businesses as well as political affairs. Myanmar, as an International Person, respects the ratified International Conventions and carries out their provisions by integrating them into national laws. Likewise, Myanmar Parliament has moved forward to update the national laws according to international standards of foreign investment, environmental and social impacts, employment, land rights and political reforms.

This paper investigates the three aforementioned Chinese investment cases such as the Letpadaungtaung copper mine project by the Wanbao Company, the gas pipeline project by China's National Petroleum Corporation, and the Myitsone dam project by the Chinese Power Investment Company. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) provides a new context for these open issues of environmental, social and human rights. The paper addresses the question of how to reduce the negative local impacts of Chinese investment projects that are allegedly dedicated to Myanmar's sustainable development. Local people had often not been informed about the projects before construction started. Moreover, the projects neglected the human rights impact assessment for local people and indigenous people. It is evident that the “Free, Prior and Informed Consent” method of public participation was not used.

INTRODUCTION

Mainland Southeast Asia, the upland regions in particular, has a long history as contested reserve of valuable minerals and forest products. Moving along transregional trade networks—at times bones of contention between competing regional powers—these resources continue to shape present-day economic and political dynamics. While mining and logging remain contested fields of resource extraction, new resource frontiers emerge: Transboundary investments in land or water reserves reveal new tendencies of resource struggles in the region.

This edited volume investigates recent trends and issues of resource extraction in Mainland Southeast Asia and their effect on local economies and social relations. Case studies from different countries analyse the socio-political dimensions of natural and agrarian resources such as minerals, water, land and cash crops. Some contributions focus on the significance of China's resource hunger for these commodities, and how local communities in the region perceive the opportunities and risks of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). However, this volume also aims to shift the focus on competing actors of resource extraction and governance within Southeast Asia and the contingent outcomes of (and local responses to) transregional economic dynamics, political entanglements and related socio-ecological transformations.

Contemporary Southeast Asia offers manifold test cases to discuss how local “frontier assemblages” (Cons and Eilenberg 2019a) relate to different (overlapping) resource regimes, corresponding discourses and changing patterns of (hybrid) resource governance (Barney 2009; Dzüvichü and Baruah 2019; Kelly and Peluso 2015; Li 2014; Miller et al. 2020). This volume brings together contributions that (re)examine different local frontier configurations and dynamics across up- and lowland Southeast Asia from various disciplinary vantage points. Providing an impressive breadth and depth of fresh empirical insights from the region, conceptually enriched by an intriguing combination of different disciplines and scales of analysis, this collection importantly highlights the complexity and diversity of actors involved. It foregrounds their intricately linked, often contesting and conflicting but sometimes surprisingly converging, interests in imagining, co-producing or challenging new frontiers of infrastructural development, resource extraction and land commoditization.

This multifaceted attention to complexity is much needed to address the ubiquitously cited rise of China's geopolitical and economic influence in Southeast Asia, most prominently expressed in the BRI (Chong and Pham 2020; Sidaway et al. 2020; Mierzejewski 2021).

INTRODUCTION

Land, and the way it is governed in Laos, reflects its central positioning for the country's socio-economic development and how the state views it predominantly as an economic asset and extractive resource. Increasing commodification of land and other natural resources has also manifested in the state's territorialization approach and strategies that have sought to reorder relationships between people, land, and the natural environment in ways that facilitate state aims of political control while also promoting economic development. Since the country's independence in 1975, the state has been focusing on various policies to sustain, expand and strengthen its political control. These policies include internal resettlement (Baird and Shoemaker 2005; Évrard and Goudineau 2004; Ponce, this volume), land use planning and land allocation programme (Lestrelin 2010; Rigg 2005), as well as various forms of land commodification through the granting of state land concession (Kenney-Lazar, Dwyer, and Hett 2018; Kenney-Lazar 2019).

In this chapter, we look at the interplay between the state's territorialization approach and strategies and the (re)shaping of frontier dynamics which (un)make the Lao uplands (Kramp, Suhardiman, and Keovilignavong 2020). Rasmussen and Lund (2018) have advocated for a bifocal perspective of territorialization and frontier dynamics, making visible their interplay in (re)configuring space, property relations and institutional arrangements. Both concepts have been used by scholars to analyse and discuss the transformations of upland areas across Southeast Asia (Barney 2009; Diepart and Sem 2018; Hall, Hirsch, and Li 2011). Scholars have also shown how territorial politics shape institutional structures (Bolleyer 2018; Keating 2018) and public policies (Agnew and Mantegna 2018). In Laos, and the region in general, state's territorialization approaches and the (re)shaping of frontier dynamics are most apparent in how states “divide their territories into complex and overlapping political and economic zones, rearrange people and resources within these units, and create regulations delineating how and by whom these areas can be used” (Vandergeest and Peluso 1995, p. 387).

Building on these works, we identify two venues where new frontier spaces emerged and took shape: policy formulation processes and programme implementation. First, we show how the process of (re)creating space, or the unfolding of frontier dynamics, has entered policymaking arenas drawing on the case of the national master plan on land allocation (NMPLA) formulation process.

INTRODUCTION

A bus from Ubon Ratchathani city to N village, located near the Mekong River on the border between Thailand and Laos, goes through rolling hills. In the lower lands spread paddy fields, while in the higher lands bush and forests. This scenery seen from the bus window, reflecting a typical rural landscape in northeast Thailand, rapidly changed. During trips to N village in 2008 and 2010, I was astonished that many forests were replaced by rubber gardens. Several years later, I also noticed that the villagers’ lifestyle became somehow “urbanized”. Indeed, in the village, still calm and peaceful at a glance, various things were reassembled.

This chapter analyses the rapid expansion of rubber cultivation in N village, exemplifying a resource frontier. Unlike traditional understandings of frontiers as geographically peripheral places where state power and control are weak (Korf and Raeymaekers 2013), resource frontiers are venues where configurations of institutional relationships over natural resources take place, mainly due to the development of capitalism, and where existing social, cultural, political and ecological orders are reassembled into new territorial orders. Assembling or reassembling exploitation and production in resource frontiers is directed by the negotiation of multiple meanings of resources (Rasmussen and Lund 2018; Cons and Eilenberg 2019; see as well the introduction to this volume by Rowedder and Tappe). Social orders and human-nature relationships in particular locales are transformed by the development of neoliberal capitalism in relation to various actors and processes in multiple geographical scales (Barney 2009). In this chapter, I demonstrate for the case of rubber expansion in N village how resource frontier assemblages are formed that transform the people's lives and environments in Thailand's context of a contemporary rural agrarian society.

In the study site of N and neighbouring villages, community-based sustainable natural resource management had been established since the 1990s, before it turned into a frontier of rubber cultivation in the 2000s. In examining the formations of assemblages in this study site, I focus on the differences in characteristics of resource frontiers in northeast Thailand, a middle-income region, from surrounding countries. The northeast was for long the poorest region in Thailand.

INTRODUCTION

Ever since China and Myanmar have shared a border, Yunnan as the melting point of different cultures and civilizations plays a critical role in China's policy towards South and Southeast Asia. In this regard being named the “bridgehead” (qiaotoubao 桥头堡) and later “radiation centre” (fushe zhongxin 辐射中心) or “pivot” in Chinese foreign policy, Yunnan has enjoyed an essential place for China's actions in the region (Summers 2019; Lu 2013). The “bridgehead” is understood mainly as a military term that refers to a strategic chokepoint on the field of battle. It mainly relates to a sturdy structure that defends and controls a bridge or ferry crossing. In economic terms, however, it acts as a port and facilitates the ease of transportation while it constitutes an international centre of trade, integrating shipping, finance and information. Going further as being located at the edge of the Chinese civilization, “bridgeheads”, namely Heilongjiang and Yunnan provinces, and Xinjiang Autonomous Region, cater to resource frontiers as they are responsible for managing frontier governance with a particular focus on cross-border trade and providing stability for China's energy security and mineral resources. Moreover, the term “bridgehead” entails the role of the centre for logistical and supply chains, serving the specific purpose of controlling the flow of resources along international trade routes (Steinberg and Fan 2012, pp. 213–20). Moreover, as part of the frontier regions, “bridgeheads” are responsible for managing the nontraditional transnational security threats and identifying their origins, conceptions and effects, like irregular migration, human trafficking, drug trafficking or climate changes (Caballero-Anthony 2016). Apart from playing an important role in national policy, the essential characteristics of a bridgehead are its powers to control, develop, and influence the regions in the neighbourhood (Jinxin 2019). To have a better understanding of Yunnan's role in China's interactions with Myanmar, the paper looks into the issues of cross-border governance and discusses the role of Yunnan in China's investment policies and the internationalization of the Chinese currency RMB, with a particular focus on the micro level across the border. The first part introduces basic Western and Chinese understandings of cross-border governance.

INTRODUCTION

In Chiang Khong District, northern Thailand, the current governance and plans of the Mekong River are contested, as are the future imaginaries for the river. Here, over the past two decades, the hydrological and ecological characteristics of the Mekong River have changed due to the construction and operation of hydropower projects upstream in China, with consequences for the lives of those who depended on river resources (Santasombat 2011; Räsänen et al. 2017). The changing river conditions have also held consequences for local social and cultural practices and beliefs connected to the river (Johnson 2019; Yong 2020). In 2019 and 2020, a serious regional drought and low and unpredictable river flows left sand bars and rocky outcrops exposed along many stretches of the river and placed at risk ecosystems, fishing and farming livelihoods, and wider food security, creating severe hardship (Middleton et al. 2021). These conditions intersected with the operation of China's large hydropower dams upstream, as well as a period of intensifying geopolitics between the US and China, further escalating the already present resource politics in northern Thailand and across the wider region (Keovilignavong, Nguyen, and Hirsch 2021). In this liminal context, the Mekong River as a resource frontier remains unsettled.

In this chapter, in the context of the severe low flows, we examine the resource politics of the Mekong River in northern Thailand as revealed through the practices, narratives and knowledge productions of several competing networks that shape the Mekong River as a resource frontier. These include the community and civil society movementled Ing People's Council (IPC), the intergovernmental Mekong River Commission (MRC) and the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC). Our conceptual approach reflects the growing recognition of the heterogeneity of water cultures and histories (or “water worlds”) in recent academic literature (Barnes and Alatout 2012), and the multiple ontologies of water that underpin them (Vogt and Walsh 2021). We draw in particular on hydrosocial literature that emphasizes how rivers are entwined within social processes that produce multiple forms of water-society assemblage (Wesselink, Kooy, and Warner 2017). Linton and Budds (2014, p. 175), for example, observe that “different kinds of waters are realized in different hydrosocial assemblages; in one such assemblage, water is constituted as a public good, while in another, it is constituted as a commodity”.

INTRODUCTION

China has been recording an ever-rising demand for tropical fruits (above all, durian) over the last two decades, particularly from Thailand. Besides China's growing affluent and consumption-oriented middle class, increasingly concerned about health and food safety, and travelling to tropical destinations in Southeast Asia and beyond, the elimination of tariffs for fruits and vegetables in 2003 within the scope of the ASEANChina Free Trade Area (ACFTA) contributed to this development. In 2017, China's import of fresh tropical fruits reached US$2.468 billion, up from US$1.378 billion in 2011 (Kubo and Sakata 2018, p. 1). Since 2002, ASEAN countries contributed more than 90 per cent of all tropical fruit imports to China (Lei 2018, p. 7), with Thailand increasingly competing with Vietnam and the Philippines. China's surging demand for Thai durian in particular is even undaunted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the first four months of 2020, it imported from Thailand US$567.29 million worth of durians, 78 per cent more than in the same period of 2019 (Theparat 2020).

While most of the fruits are shipped by sea, with Shenzhen, Shanghai and Tianjin as the most important ports, overland transport through China's border provinces of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Yunnan has grown significantly, particularly since the establishment of ACFTA. While most fresh fruit overland imports are shipped through Guangxi's Pingxiang Port on the border with Vietnam, “making it one of China's most significant entry ports for ASEAN member fresh fruit shipments” (GIZ 2020, p. 30), Yunnan's Mohan port on the China-Laos border, and, by extension, Laos have gained in importance. Since the opening of the Kunming-Bangkok Highway in 2008, which links the markets of China and Thailand through a 228-km section traversing Laos’ northwestern provinces of Luang Namtha and Bokeo, Yunnan province has been developing into an essential hub for imported Thai fruits. The opening of the 4th Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge in December 2013, linking Chiang Khong (Chiang Rai province, Thailand) and Huay Xai (Bokeo province, Laos) across the Mekong River, further boosted this development. Only by then, trucks did not need to take the timeconsuming and inconvenient ferry trips anymore.

INTRODUCTION

In December 2018, some days after interviewing Pho (“Father”) Tha, he invited me, my research partner, and Pho Keo (his friend) for a lunch and drinking session at his home. Pho Keo and Pho Tha are both Theravada Lao Buddhists in their fifties. Comparing their socioeconomic status, Pho Keo was comparatively prosperous because he was a successful businessman in their old village; he also managed to send all his children to college. After the relocation, Pho Keo has been running some lucrative businesses powered by electricity and receiving financial support from his unmarried children. Now Pho Keo and Pho Tha are no longer neighbours as they live in the new settlement's different zones.

INTRODUCTION

When France seized control of the Lao territories on the east bank of the Mekong from Siam in 1893, the sparsely populated country remained a colonial “backwater” that received only little administrative and commercial attention (Gunn 1990; Ivarsson 2008). However, as Laos was rich in minerals, not only gold and silver but also tin and copper, it evoked imaginaries of a “Klondike Indochinois and New Bolivia” (Deloncle [1930] 2011, p. 116) and attracted numerous entrepreneurs and venturers. Taking the tin mining area in the Nam Phathaen valley (Khammouane Province, central Laos; see Figures 8.1 and 8.2) as an example, this chapter investigates the contingent processes of (capitalist) frontierization—processes of uneven and combined development on the ground—in past and present Laos.

The image of a resource frontier has certainly shaped the perception of Laos until the present day. Still in the 2000s, the Asian Development Bank depicted the country as a “new frontier” (Barney 2009, p. 147) and promoted transnational investment into mining, energy and agribusiness, which was a striking echo of colonial discourses on underdeveloped and underpopulated Laos. Both under colonial capitalism and in the context of present-day “market socialism with neoliberal characteristics” (Hann and Endres 2018), the vast, forested uplands of Laos (80 per cent of the state territory with only half of the country's population of 7 million), in particular, have been envisaged as a resource-rich frontier awaiting exploitation. This imaginary translated into extractive practice that produced considerable social and environmental costs among the fifty different ethnic groups of Laos and their largely subsistence-based economies (see, e.g., Kenney-Lazar 2018; Rigg 2005; Laungaramsri 2012; Dwyer and Vongvisouk 2017; Ponce, this volume).

As several authors have noted (Tsing 2005; Li 2014; Cons and Eilenberg 2019), the concept of the (resource) frontier can be used as a heuristic device to examine the interwoven social, economic, political and environmental dynamics and transformations at the margins of global capitalism (see as well the introduction to this volume by Rowedder and Tappe). In particular, the relationship between global capital and indigenous communities, processes of exclusion, and increasing inequalities can be examined through the lens of the frontier. Shifts in local subsistence strategies and labour relations under conditions of frontier capitalism and rudimentary industrialization constitute a key aspect to be discussed in this chapter.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• • Concepts and patterns of Chinese migration are often described with terms such as guigen (归根, return to one's original roots), shenggen (生根, sprout local roots), shigen (失根, lose original roots), wugen (无根, without roots), and duogen (多根, many roots). These terms, linked to the Mandarin word gen (根, roots), carry various meanings including home, citizenship, ethnicity, as well as local language, culture and society.

• • In Southeast Asia, the predominant patterns of migration are shenggen/shigen, guigen, shenggen/shigen, wugen and/or duogen. These concepts represent the mainstream patterns during various periods, which may admittedly exist concurrently.

• • The pattern in each particular period is influenced by an array of internal and external factors, such as colonial and subsequently government policies directed at migrants, as well as forces and opportunities afforded by globalization.

• • Since the 1980s, the wugen or duogen concept has been at the forefront as Chinese migrate or even remigrate to developed countries. Notably, these migrants may be descendants of previously assimilated Chinese migrants from earlier periods.