Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Table of Contents
- List of Maps and Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on Language and Transliteration
- Introduction
- 1 “We Are All Tai Lue”: International Trade Fairs as Local Ethnic Affairs
- 2 “Normal Fruits for Laos, Premium Fruits for China”: Transnational Flows of National Differences
- 3 Thailand: High Quality; China: Low Price”: “Banal Cosmopolitanism” in Local Marketplaces
- 4 “I Didn’t Learn Any Occupation, so I Trade”: Narratives of Insignificance
- 5 “No Matter What, We’ll Find a Way”: Uncertain (Chinese?) Futures
- Conclusion: Large Insights from Smallness
- Bibliography
- Index
- Asian Borderlands
5 - “No Matter What, We’ll Find a Way”: Uncertain(Chinese?) Futures
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 November 2022
- Frontmatter
- Table of Contents
- List of Maps and Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on Language and Transliteration
- Introduction
- 1 “We Are All Tai Lue”: International Trade Fairs as Local Ethnic Affairs
- 2 “Normal Fruits for Laos, Premium Fruits for China”: Transnational Flows of National Differences
- 3 Thailand: High Quality; China: Low Price”: “Banal Cosmopolitanism” in Local Marketplaces
- 4 “I Didn’t Learn Any Occupation, so I Trade”: Narratives of Insignificance
- 5 “No Matter What, We’ll Find a Way”: Uncertain (Chinese?) Futures
- Conclusion: Large Insights from Smallness
- Bibliography
- Index
- Asian Borderlands
Summary
Abstract
In this chapter, I critically reflect on theinescapable expectation to write first andforemost on China's assertive infrastructure pushunder the BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) labelwhen studying current developments in (northern)Laos. I start instead by considering uncertaintyand change as integral parts of northern Laotraders’ transnational worlds. Their engagementwith the intensified, but not unprecedented,Chinese impact in the region needs to beunderstood against the backdrop of theirresilience, versatility, and resourcefulness incontinually finding new venues for economicexperimentation—and in living with, and activelyimpacting on, China-driven developments. I fleshout how they translate, reproduce, or challengelarger Chinese visions of modernity, development,and infrastructural connectivity as aspirations,hopes, dreams, and fears.
Keywords: Northern Laos; China; Beltand Road Initiative (BRI); infrastructure;development; uncertainty; resilience
So far, it might seem as if I have merely uncriticallyand naively praised Lao cross-border traders’skilfully deployed smallness, through which they blend inwith and actively sustain the larger transnationaldynamics of a rapidly changing borderland, and thatI have thereby mainly focused on success stories.However, my argument should not be misunderstood aspainting an exclusively rosy picture of national andregional neoliberal policies of economic opening-upand cross-border integration, uncritically endorsingexternal visions of regional connectivity such asthe Asian Development Bank's (ADB) Greater MekongSubregion (GMS) or China's BRI.
I agree with Antonella Diana (2013, p. 27) “thatdespite claims of deregulation, trans-border tradeand mobility of ethnic minority border dwellersremain conditional on an unpredictable statemechanism of loosening and tightening.” Diana'sstudy on China's Tai Lue traders at the Sino-Laoborder demonstrates that their “border strategies”are contingent on a “governing pattern ofexperimentation” (Ibid.), enabling but alsodisabling flexible cross-border mobility.Consequently, Diana explains the traders’ rathershort-lived success in the cross-border trade ofrice and corn, from 2004 until mid-2005, throughbeneficial border policies within which theirstrategies could fully unfold. Hence, with theimposition of stricter border regulations andprotectionist measures on the Chinese side in July2005, which worsened in June 2006, the TaiLue-specific border strategies she described wereultimately to no avail, prompting numerous tradersto give up their trade activities.
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- Cross-Border Traders in Northern LaosMastering Smallness, pp. 195 - 220Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2022