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2.6.Mainland ASEAN in China’s New Era: “One Belt, One Road, One River?”
ОглавлениеMainland ASEAN, consisting of Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia (the peninsular part), Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam, is crucially situated at the focal point of China’s connectivity schemes linking with its southern and western provinces. It is impossible to deal with all the relevant areas, dimensions, and scopes here. Our discussion focuses only on the Mekong River sub-region, which nonetheless represents various key issues.
The Mekong River, which flows through three provinces of China, running across Myanmar, Lao PDR, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, is around 4,909 kilometers in length and is the 10th largest river in the world (Mekong River Commission, n.d.). The Mekong River Basin includes substantial areas of Laos, Thailand, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Myanmar (listed in order of the size of the basin area in respective countries). Covering an area of 795,000 square kilometers, it ranks 21st among river basins worldwide. Its area in Indochina amounts to 40% of the total area of Mainland ASEAN riparian countries, while its area in China covers only 2% of the whole country (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2011). The river is described as consisting of two parts, i.e. the upper Mekong, which refers to its origin and passage in China and is called “Lancang” in Chinese, and the lower Mekong, which refers to its passage through Mainland ASEAN countries which is called “Mekong” proper. According to the China-based Lancang–Mekong Cooperation Framework (to be discussed below), this particular geographical and economic setting “(feeds) altogether 360 million people” (including the population in the three Chinese provinces along the Lancang); and all the riparian countries of the Mekong “are home to 230 million people and boast a combined GDP of over US$600 billion and an average annual growth rate of nearly 7%” (Lancang–Mekong Cooperation, 2017b). As a sub-region, the Mekong River Basin constitutes a major ecosystem and has the potential for development and connectivity. It is of note that, when we speak of Mainland ASEAN as an entity, the Mekong area and linkages often represent a salient unit of their own (whether geographical, geo-political, or geo-economical) that involve half of the ASEAN member countries.
Unsurprisingly, the sub-region has been a major focus of the attempts at international cooperation, resulting in many multilateral and multifaceted mechanisms. The Mekong Committee was initially established under a statute endorsed by the United Nations in 1957 and was joined by Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. The scope of the project of the Committee is said to be “the largest single development project the UN had ever undertaken” at that time (Mekong River Commission, n.d.). Later on, in 1977, due to domestic political situations, Cambodia left the organization, which was then succeeded by the Interim Mekong Committee consisting of the other three countries. The legacy of both committees in terms of information, linkage, and experience was then transferred to their successor, namely, the Mekong River Commission (MRC), which was set up on April 5, 1995 in Chiang Rai, Thailand, under the Agreement on Cooperation for Sustainable Development of the Mekong River Basin (the Mekong Agreement) signed by Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand, and Vietnam. The MRC has been funded by and has involvement of the governments of the member countries and others, as well as various international financial and development agencies. Overall, however, it may be said to be funded more by Western donors rather than the member countries themselves (Middleton & Allouche, 2016). China and Myanmar have also been dialogue partners of the organization since 1996 (Mekong River Commission, n.d.).
Another major multilateral cooperation body has been the Greater Mekong Sub-region Cooperation Program (GMS), which was established in 1992 under the leading coordination and support of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Six member nations of the GMS include all five ASEAN riparian countries of the Mekong and China, i.e. Yunnan Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in particular, (Greater Mekong Sub-region, n.d.). The GMS cooperation framework has strategically focused on conventional infrastructure and multi-sector investments “designed to foster economic corridor development” and its subsequent schemes (Greater Mekong Sub-region, n.d.). While China has been quite disengaged in MRC, it is under GMS framework that she has shown strong enthusiasm in cooperation on transport and energy (Biba, 2018).
With regard to Mainland ASEAN and China, the most important sub-regional mechanism is obviously the Lancang–Mekong Cooperation (LMC). At first, Thailand took the initiative to arrange an international conference among all six riparian countries of the Lancang River and Mekong River in November 2012 with the objective of cooperating in handling the “many challenges such as natural disasters and security concerns,” which are lacking in other multilateral mechanisms (The Nation, 2012). Along with other nations, China responded positively to the initiative. Furthermore, during Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to Thailand in October 2013, a joint press statement was issued with an article confirming that “the Chinese side expressed its support for Thailand’s initiative to host the International Conference on Sustainable Development of Lancang–Mekong River Sub-region” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Thailand, 2013). In November 2014, at the 17th ASEAN–China Summit, it was reported that Li Keqiang “proposed the establishment of the Lancang–Mekong Framework, which was warmly welcomed by the five Mekong River countries” (Lancang–Mekong Cooperation, 2017b).
Then on March 23, 2016 in Sanya city of China’s Hainan province (and island), China hosted the first LMC Leaders’ Meeting, with “Shared river, Shared future” as its theme, issuing the Sanya Declaration affirming the vision “For a Community of Shared Future of Peace and Prosperity among Lancang–Mekong Countries,” which will be “an example of a new form of international relations featuring win–win cooperation” (Lancang–Mekong Cooperation, 2017b). The declaration details “three cooperation pillars” consisting of “(1) political and security issues, (2) economic and sustainable development, and (3) social, cultural and people-to-people exchanges,” and “five priority areas during the initial stage of the LMC” including “connectivity, production capacity, cross-border economic cooperation, water resources, agriculture and poverty reduction” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, 2016). These LMC visions and schemes entitled “3+5 Cooperation Framework” may be said to be aspiring and encompassing indeed (see Lancang–Mekong Cooperation, 2017a). LMC has become a major framework of cooperation among Mekong riparian countries in a comprehensive way, with China playing a leading role. Yet, it is stated clearly in the declaration that the LMC framework will be coordinated and executed on the basis of a “government-guided, multiple-participation, and project-oriented model” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, 2016). As noted by a number of scholars, LMC should not be understood, at least in its current settings, as an international institution or organization cooperating within a river basin, unlike the MRC, which has codified specified rules and regulations derived from the UN Watercourses Convention (Biba, 2018, p. 634; Middleton & Allouche, 2016, p. 113).
The “Second LMC Leaders’ Meeting” was held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on January 10, 2018, resulting in the endorsement of the LMC Five-Year Plan of Action (2018–2022) (Mu, 2018). The plan began with a number of shared development goals that are to be accomplished by “synergizing China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the ASEAN Community Vision 2025 as well as the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity 2025” (Lancang–Mekong Cooperation, 2018). It then lists approximately 80 sections of activities for practical cooperation on the basis of the three pillars and five priority areas described above. These envisioned projects will “fully utilize the LMC Special Fund set up by China” along “with financial resources inputs from the six countries” as well as “financial institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Silk Road Fund and the Asian Development Bank” (Lancang–Mekong Cooperation, 2018). To be sure, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is a new international financial institution led by China, and the Silk Road Fund is a state-owned investment fund of the Chinese government set up specifically for BRI projects. Moreover, Premier Li Keqiang also announced in Phnom Penh on this occasion that, within the framework of LMC, China will provide an additional loan amount of US$6 billion for various infrastructure and industry cooperation projects (Lifang, 2018). The LMC will thus depend heavily on China’s financial support, not to mention other aspects such as technology and expertise.
Although China’s involvement in the development of the LMC has been largely under the performance of Premier Li Keqiang, we have also witnessed President Xi Jinping’s expression of support on some occasions. For example, during his meeting in Jakarta with Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia in April 2015, Xi specifically mentioned “the countries along the Mekong River” alongside ASEAN as China’s partners for increasing dialogue and cooperation (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, 2017a). And on December 1, 2017, while meeting again with Hun Sen in Beijing, Xi “called for stronger bilateral coordination in multilateral mechanisms such as the United Nations, East Asia Cooperation and Lancang–Mekong Cooperation” (Liangyu, 2017). He also named LMC as a partnership scheme on other diplomatic occasions, including, his talk with Myanmar President U Htin Kyaw in Beijing on April 10, 2017 (Zhangrui, 2017), his meeting with Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha of Thailand in Xiamen on September 4, 2017 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, 2017b), and his article published in Vietnamese media ahead of his state visit to Vietnam in November 2017 (Xi, 2017c). The LMC was referred to with a strong emphasis in the case of Xi’s state visit to Laos around mid-November 2017. In his signed article published in Lao media prior to the occasion, he metaphorically stresses that “Like the Lancang–Mekong River that runs through our two countries, the common mission and ideals that bind us together have forged a common destiny for us” (Xi, 2017a). And as Laos would co-chair the LMC with China in 2018, Xi affirms that “China will work with Laos to facilitate more cooperation outcomes, …, promote sub-regional development and bring more benefits to the countries and peoples in the region” (Xi, 2017a).
As we have seen, Xi Jinping and other leading people and agencies of China have emphatically reiterated a number of key words in foreign policymaking. These include, among others, non-hegemony, shared future, and strategic partnership. I would like to focus on these crucial elements in relation to the Mekong River basin as a major entity of Mainland ASEAN and China.
It is of note that China is de facto the hydro-hegemon of the Mekong River. The terms and concepts of “hydro-hegemony” and “hydro-hegemon,” are parts of an analytical framework of power positions and situations among riparian countries in trans-boundary river basins. They were employed by Zeitoun and Warner in their studies of the Nile, Jordan, and Tigris, and Euphrates, and were later addressed by Biba in his analysis of China’s politics in the Lancang–Mekong River (Zeitoun & Warner, 2006; Biba, 2018, p. 638). In “international hydro-relations,” the position of hydro-hegemony of a riparian nation is attained if it holds decisive superiority over other co-riparian countries in capability asymmetries consisting of: (1) riparian position (upstream/downstream), (2) dimensions of power (military, economic, ideational), and (3) exploitation potential (infrastructure and technological capacity). Zeitoun and Warner argue that “the nature of interaction over water resources and form of hydro-hegemony established is determined by the hydro-hegemon… and to what extent the benefits derived from the flows will also extend to the weaker co-riparians” (Zeitoun & Warner, 2006, pp. 45–452). Yet, the reality of hegemony and asymmetry needs not produce only adverse repercussions. On the one hand, a hydro-hegemon may act positively, guiding and cooperating with co-riparian states to attain a shared-benefit situation under a lengthy “shadow of the future” among all parties involved. On the other, the hydro-hegemon may behave negatively and turn its position into dominative forms, resulting in intensity of conflicts between itself and other basin states. To be sure, most international hydro-relations and hydro-hegemonic configurations “fall somewhere between the poles of enlightened leadership and oppressive domination” (Zeitoun & Warner, 2006, p. 439).
From the perspective of this framework, China undoubtedly possesses a preponderance of capabilities in all these three aspects when compared relatively with other basin states, and therefore actually assumes a hydro-hegemon position that can determine the nature of interaction in the Lancang–Mekong basin. Evidently, the way China had avoided active roles in other Mekong international mechanisms and established the LMC with China in the driver’s seat can be viewed as signaling the shift towards hydro-hegemonic maneuvering. To what extent this shift and its subsequent processes reflect positive and negative impacts constitute a major issue of uncertainty and controversy among all parties concerned. The Lancang–Mekong River and its extensive basin represent a vital “shared future” among all six LMC member countries. How China treats its “strategic partners” under the LMC scheme inevitably reflects China’s overall diplomatic and policy orientation towards the whole Mainland ASEAN. The declaration and plan of the LMC emphatically link this cooperation framework of “Shared River, Shared Future” to the BRI. It remains to be seen if this LMC initiative, when combined with the BRI, may bring about a shared vision styled after China’s own terminology: “One Belt, One Road, One River.”