Abstract
Fueled by the synergy of cross-border trade, investment, and development between China and Laos, the Lao state attempts to reassert its domination over the upland areas and population by converting poppy fields into rubber land. However, at the same time, the influx and circulation of money, goods, and people resulting from the cross-border economic exchanges rework local social and economic life and produce new forms of sociality. Accordingly, my focus is on the social significance of the interactions between the Chinese and the Lao Akha in Muang Sing and Muang Long. Problemtizing the concept of ‘frontier,’ I argue that this frontier space is of multiple engagements and significantly provides the Lao Akha new ways to experiment with a spectrum of social and economic opportunities. By highlighting the role of aspiration, indigenizing modernity and personalized connections, this examination casts new lights on the Lao Akha’s experience of their livelihood transition from a subsistence-oriented to a market-based one.
Keywords: frontier, Laos, transborder livelihood experiment, indigenized modernity
Introduction
Since appearing in the 2000s, rubber plantations have spread widely throughout the areas of Laos and Myanmar which border Southwest China. This surge in rubber-cultivation activities has been primarily motivated by China's high demand for natural rubber; mainly in support of its expanding automobile industry (FAO CTTP 2010; Huang 2007). According to official Chinese discourse, the opening of rubber plantations in Laos and Myanmar close to the Chinese border provides an alternative to the growing of opium poppies in these areas, and in practice such plantations are operated by highly business-oriented state and private enterprises. By 2010, over 180 Chinese companies were engaged in agriculture projects (including rubber, sugarcane, rice, and other seasonal cash crops) in the former poppy-growing regions of Myanmar and Laos, covering 0.12 million hectares in Myanmar and 0.09 million hectares in Laos (CPGMSECP 2011).
On the Laos side, the introduction of alternative forms of development by China has been underpinned by the Laotian state's drive to modernize highland populations, halt swidden agriculture, commercialize land resources, and, through the eradication of opium production, reshape the nation's identity (Cohen 2013). Partly motivated by the high price of latex in the global market, in the mid-2000s many smallholders from ethnic groups living in the highlands of Luang Namtha – a northern Lao province – attempted to diversify their livelihoods through the cultivation of rubber.