Crossroads at the periphery: Chinese influence in the Southeast Asian borderlands

© 2017 Dr. Sunsanee Clair McDonnellRoads, bridges and railways have become prominent technical solutions to a broad range of economic, social and political issues in China and the developing countries of Southeast Asia. In 1992, the Asian Development Bank established the Greater Mekong Subregion Economic Cooperation Program, a regional initiative between Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia and China’s Guangxi Autonomous Region and Yunnan province. Through so-called “economic corridors,” these countries imagine a connected region with increased flows of people, goods and capital. The program’s main objective is to alleviate poverty. However, large-scale infrastructural projects, encouraged by a “will to integrate” in Southeast Asia and incoming capital from a rising China, often have unintended consequences for the people that they are intended to help. The thesis examines development discourse and practice in the borderlands of northern Thailand, northeastern Laos and southwestern China. It focuses on the recently completed Bangkok-Kunming highway that passes through the once peripheral “backwaters” that central governments have either neglected or struggled to control. Following the road, this thesis adopts a multi-sited and “moving-sited” ethnographic approach to understand the aspirations, motivations and frustrations of the various individuals who interact with, or are affected by the road and related projects and policy. It contends that despite the apolitical renderings of such projects, politics is inflamed as various actors negotiate, contest and subvert development discourse and practice to their own ends. More broadly it asks how different actors in Southeast Asia perceive China’s economic rise and investment in the region. By placing the periphery of states at the centre, this thesis shifts academic discussion from dominant narratives of China as hegemon to a discussion based on Southeast Asian perceptions, and importantly, the human dimension of regional integration