The SEA Games seem also to be sparking controversy in Laos itself and among the Lao diaspora. In the past week or so, Radio Free Asia  has picked up on reports that Lao authorities stopped a convoy of 150 people heading to Vientiane to ’stage a pro-democracy protest’ at the Patuxay monument, detaining nine of the group. The government denied the reports saying ‘people with bad intentions’ want to ‘tarnish the reputation and destroy the image of the Lao PDR’ on the eve of National Day (Dec 2nd) and the SEA Games. Meanwhile, the ‘protesters’ said they only ‘wanted help’ from the government.

But this is just the tip of the online iceberg. A stream of press releases from sites like Online PR News and Media Newswire have suggested more than 1000 ‘dissidents’ and ‘ordinary citizens urging peaceful reform’ have been arrested. Because it is Laos, it is impossible to verify any of these reports and nothing has made it through to the mainstream media. Also, the press releases seem to have been produced by – or at least with the cooperation of – anti-government groups working outside the country, which refer to the ‘November 2nd 2009 protest’ as a ten-year commemoration of student protests in October 1999

It is not unexpected that an event like the SEA Games, with the foreign attention it brings, would spark protests. But in Laos organised public demonstrations are rare and even less commonly heard about.

The National Library of Australia has begun subscribing to Khwamsangop: Siang khong pongkan khwamsangop pasason, a Lao national newspaper, issued by the Ministry of National Security for the past 11 years. It reports on law enforcement agency investigations and prosecutions of crime and security matters. Stories cover provincial and district news, as well as VIP and foreign affairs related news. Some of the 20 pages are in colour. An interesting piece from the 13-17 April  2009 issue discusses vehicle accidents in Viengchan (image below). Figures for the first quarter of 2009 include 930 vehicles damaged (373 seriously damaged), 325 people injured, 63 seriously injured, and 60 fatalities. This is very informative about the real state of traffic safety in Viengchan.

[This post is provided by the National Library of Australia as part of our Book Zone feature. For further information on the featured publications contact Saowapha Viravong at sviravong@nla.gov.au]

[Simon Creak, a PhD Candidate at The Australian National University, has examined the issues at stake in next month's SEA Games in Laos for Asia Times Online. Supposedly a massive achievement for the small country, the games have been scaled back and are dependent on enormous foreign funding. What to make of the paradox? Read on and leave your comments.]

Long after the misadventures of the United States in Indochina, landlocked Laos evokes golden temples, golden smiles and, in the business world, golden mining prospects. But it is a different type of gold that will occupy the nation when the region’s Southeast Asian (SEA) Games are for the first time staged in the country, from 9-18 December. What’s in it for little Laos?

The SEA Games may not register much outside the region, but this year celebrating their golden jubilee, they are a big deal for the 11 countries involved. These are Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The previous games, in Thailand in 2007, featured more that 5,000 athletes and almost 2,000 officials across 43 different sports.

Laos, a tiny country of just six million people, is understandably excited at hosting the 25th games for the first time in the event’s 50-year history. Local news reports in the state-controlled media refer proudly to the “honor” of playing host, while organizers boast the event will “put Laos on the map”, attract tourists and draw foreign investment.

Just as important, the ruling Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) sees the games as a boost to the regime’s prestige at home. This is not just a sports event, but probably the country’s biggest state extravaganza since formally gaining independence from France in July 1949.

Underlining the party-state’s involvement, the president of the organizing committee is Deputy Prime Minister Somsavat Lengsavad.

Despite the difference in scale, there are parallels to the Summer Olympic Games held in China last year. Just as Beijing leveraged the event to proclaim China’s emergence as a global power, the games in Vientiane represent a regional coming-out for the Lao one-party state, a symbolic culmination of the over three decade-long “revolutionary struggle” for independence and development under the LPRP.

Undertaking the complex task of the hosting a major international event, in that thinking, demonstrates the country’s modern credentials.

Perennially the “smaller brother” to its regional rivals, hosting the event constitutes nothing less than a symbolic coming of age for Laos. A government spokesman told the Bangkok Post, “The SEA Games in Laos is a magnificent example of what sports can do … and Laos has joined the giants in this respect.”

Here the issue is less about showcasing the nation to attract tourism and investment, than demonstrating the munificence of the ruling party-state.

More unexpected, perhaps, is the widespread transnational support for the games among the Lao diaspora, formed from the mass exodus of refugees after the party’s 1975 rise to power when it overthrew the royalist government, forcing King Savang Vatthana to abdicate.

Fans discuss the games in a Facebook group and websites, some set up even before the official games site. Many contributors plan to travel to Laos for the event, one enthusing, “I have built my whole year around this.” Identified online by the flag of the pre-1975 royal regime, such posts suggest the Lao national pride of hosting the event may be linking Lao communities usually separated by distance and politics.

Yet, many questions also surround the event. Due to a lack of infrastructure, the Lao version of the games will consist of only 25 sports, little more than half the number held in Thailand. The omission of standard sports such as basketball, gymnastics and track cycling has outraged some competing nations, particularly Malaysia and the Philippines, while the addition of novelties such as finswimming – a speed competition in which swimmers don a large, dolphin-like fin – has aroused chuckles of dismay.

It matters little that these countries are aggrieved at the loss of medal opportunities, nor that all SEA Games’ hosts nominate their own, often quirky events. Press coverage has focused not on Laos’ unprecedented national achievement, but on the games’ loss of “glamour” and reduced “priority” for these countries. The poverty and lack of development of Laos – one of the region’s poorest nations – has attracted particular attention, the exact opposite of what the Lao government is trying to promote.

Most symbolically, perhaps, Laos is able to host the games only through massive assistance from its larger, richer allies in the region. The Chinese Development Bank has provided financing for the US$100 million main stadium complex, which is being built by Chinese contractors on the outskirts of the capital, Vientiane.

A Vietnamese company has built the $19 million athletes’ village and Thai funds have been used to refurbish the existing National Stadium. Dozens of smaller financial agreements with countries like Japan and South Korea will provide everything from training to tracksuits.

Strategic patronage

There are good reasons for these countries to contribute their patronage. First is the simple commercial benefit. In return for building the stadium, Chinese developers were reportedly granted 1,640 hectares of prime land near the That Luang stupa, the national symbol, on which to develop a “Chinatown” complex in Vientiane. The Vietnamese company that funded the athletes’ village is opening a wood-processing factory and hotel in Laos.

Second is regional influence. Thailand, Vietnam and China have long competed for influence in Laos. While socialist Vietnam has held political sway since the 1975 revolution, China has aggressively expanded its economic presence and soft power in the region, and some in the government, notably the Chinese-educated Somsavat, have increasingly turned to the regional giant. Thailand, meanwhile, considers Laos a natural part of its sphere for cultural and historical reasons, a perception boosted by the flow of goods, people and information across the Mekong River that separates the two countries.

Third is regional friendship and cooperation. For half a century, the SEA Games and their predecessor, the Southeast Asian Peninsula Games, have been the region’s major cultural expression of regionalism, providing opportunity for friendly cooperation and rivalry without the risk of political fallout.

But despite all the pluses, the huge foreign assistance required to host the event has raised stubborn questions about Laos’ national autonomy. For every article invoking the “spirit of ASEAN”, others scoff at Laos’ inability to fund and organize their own event. (The 11 participants at the SEA Games comprise the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, plus East Timor.)

The New York Times recently summed up the feeling in the headline “Laos stumbles on Path to Sporting Glory”. Reinforced in the region’s own press, such views emphasize Laos’ dependence on foreign aid, undermining the games’ perceived benefits at home and abroad.

This ambivalence is also evident in the country. Opposition to the Chinatown deal, which saw the original development plan significantly scaled back, was framed in xenophobic nationalist terms, with residents questioning how the government could give up land to foreigners in the heart of the capital. With the deal pared back, questions linger as to how the Chinese will be compensated, raising the specter of massive government debt at a time the financial downturn has already applied added pressure on the games.

Meanwhile, web-board contributors ask how the new facilities can be “Lao” when they are adorned with banners in Chinese or Korean. Others wonder why developers have imported their own workers from China, rather than employing local Lao labor. Others still ponder why Laos cannot even produce its own merchandise for the games.

Such criticisms point to the central paradox of the SEA Games: how can they be a national achievement when the nation is so dependent on others to host them? Ultimately, factors which seem to mitigate the positive impact of the games need to be viewed in historical perspective.

The Lao nation and nationalism have always emerged from the intersection of national, regional and international ideologies and interests. In pre-colonial times, minor Lao kingdoms paid tribute to one or more overlords, allowing them to retain a substantial degree of autonomy in the process. Likewise, the peculiarity of French colonialism was that, rather than destroying Lao identities, it actually created the modern idea of Laos as a political and cultural entity.

The post-colonial Royal Lao Government was the heir of this national identity, which further solidified despite, or perhaps because of, Cold War rivalries, the Vietnam War and a budget largely underwritten by US assistance. After the US withdrawal and the communist revolution of 1975, the new regime looked to the socialist bloc, especially Vietnam and the Soviet Union, to plug the financial gap.

The enduring theme in this history has been the inability of Laos to pay its own way; its engagement with and dependence on foreign powers. The country’s current strategy of market-based development underwritten by foreign investment, foreign aid and ASEAN integration continues the trend.

Far from being undermined, the party-state represents itself as the all-powerful and benevolent conductor of these forces. This explains why state-run newspapers are filled constantly with photographs of “handover ceremonies”, and never more so than in the lead-up to the games. In this worldview, hosting the games demonstrates not the government’s lack of independence, but its consummate skill in harnessing aid from the region.

The general population might not be completely convinced, but this does not matter in the wider view. The 2009 SEA Games’ limited size and dependence on foreign help merely accords with the self-image of Laos as a small country with limited resources.

Last year, for instance, the country sent a tiny team of four athletes to the Beijing Olympics, thanks to funding from the International Olympic Committee. While there was certainly some criticism on the Internet, more comments focused on the positive. “Four is better than nothing,” said one, while another suggested plaintively, “When we are poor, we have to accept that we are poor.”

This may not be how the government sees its hosting of a scaled-back games, but, together with positioning itself as a benevolent conductor of foreign assistance, such views help to explain how the event is being seen as a success inside the country when those outside see mainly dependence and poverty. Laos’ little SEA Games are a big deal for the poor country, foreign-funded or not.

[Simon Creak is a PhD candidate at the College of Asia-Pacific, Australian National University, with a specialization in the history of Laos. He can be contacted at simon.creak@anu.edu.au.]

Lillehammer, Albertville, Lake Placid. Major sports events have a way of putting obscure places on the map. This was the hope harbored by Laos’s Communist leaders when they offered Vientiane, the capital, as the host of the Southeast Asian Games this December.

But so far the greatest legacy of the games is a record deficit that has forced the country to seek emergency loans and strike secretive deals that give away large swaths of land.

- Extracted from Thomas Fuller, “Laos Stumbles on Path to Sporting Glory”, The New York Times, 6 October 2009.

If any New Mandala readers who will be in Laos during the games want to provide updates (think of it as a kick-start to a career as a sports journalist) we would be delighted to hear from you.

The details are:

Asian Borderlands: Enclosure, Interaction and Transformation – CALL FOR PANELS / PAPERS

2nd Conference of the Asian Borderlands Research Network

Chiang Mai University (RCSD), Thailand

5 – 7 November  2010

State-centered views of the world continue to predominate, but it is increasingly apparent that these restrict perspectives on dynamics within broader regional fields. In an attempt to leapfrog a definition of the world in terms of national economies, societies, cultures and histories, ‘borderland’ centered perspectives have emerged. But whereas borderland studies have quickly developed in Africa, Europe and North America, the field is still in its infancy in Asia. ‘Asian Borderlands: Enclosure, Interaction and Transformation’ intends to encourage scholarship that looks across Asian borders.

The conference takes its cue from an important new book by James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (Yale UP, 2009). In this book, Scott focuses on the mountainous regions of the Himalayas and its lower ranges that run from the Central Highlands in Vietnam, most of Laos, Northern Thailand, Southwest China, Northern Burma, Northeast India, Eastern Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet. The 200 million people living in this huge region (over 15 million km²) are geographically dispersed and culturally diverse, yet they share crucial cultural, economic and social characteristics: hill agriculture, physical mobility, relatively egalitarian social structures, as well as commonalities in material culture and outlook. National borders often appear utterly arbitrary to them as many groups spill across two or more national borders. In this way they distinguish themselves from the lowland populations who dominate the states in which they live. Scott refers to this region as ‘Zomia’, a term coined by Willem van Schendel (2002/2005).

What is the viability and relevance of a concept such as Zomia for the study of Asian borderlands? To what extend are people in such border zones sharing ideas, practices and attitudes? Why and how do they remain different? How are relationships, alliances and conflicts between hills and plains people defined? In what ways are cultural and social dynamics in and beyond such a region influenced by political boundaries? How do people engage in, and are engaged by, processes of modernization and globalization?

We invite conceptually innovative papers, based on new research, which address questions such as these, in order to develop new perspectives on the study of Asian borderlands. Panels will be considered that have a thematic focus, are of a comparative character, and involve scholars affiliated to distinct research institutions. Click here to submit proposals. Participants will be notified by February 1st, 2010.

Deadline to send in abstracts / panel proposals: 1 December 2009

Participants are expected to fund their own travel and stay. Very limited financial support may be made available to specific scholars residing in Asia. If you would like to be considered for a grant: please submit with your abstract for a panel and/or paper a short letter motivating your request. Please specify the kind of funding that you have applied for or will receive from other sources. The conference operates on a very limited budget, and will not normally be able to provide more than a partial coverage of costs of travel and stay.

Convenors:
Dr. Chayan Vaddhanaphuti
Prof. Willem van Schendel
Dr. Erik de Maaker

The advertisement sets out all of the details:

The University of Wisconsin-Madison seeks candidates for an assistant professor (tenure-track) position with a specialization in Hmong studies or related highland societies in Southeast Asia and/or adjacent regions. Appointment to begin August 2010. Ph.D. required. Previous teaching experience at the college/university level desirable but not required. Duties include teaching at the undergraduate and graduate level, conduct scholarly research in area of expertise, and perform university and professional service as appropriate. The successful candidate will be expected to do collaborative work in the Center for Southeast Asian Studies and participate in program activities. The tenure home for the appointment will reside in a department appropriate to the candidate’s discipline, i.e., social sciences or arts and humanities. To ensure full consideration, applications must be received by December 1, 2009. Applications and three letters of reference, in PDF format, should be sent via email to Dr. Michael Cullinane at mmcullin@wisc.edu and Professor Kris Olds at kolds@wisc.edu. For additional information, see http://www.ohr.wisc.edu/pvl/pv_062881.html and http://hmongstudiesmadison.wordpress.com/. The University of Wisconsin-Madison is an equal opportunity employer and encourages women and minorities to apply. A criminal background check may be required prior to employment.

It would be remiss of New Mandala not to join the many others who have congratulated Amy Chanthaphavong on her selection as Miss Asian America. She is the first Lao to wear this crown.

The key points from the data are:

1. Of the five countries shown, Thailand has the lowest yields. Surprisingly, the IRRI data suggest that yields in Laos have been higher than Thai yields since the early 1990s. Is this plausible?
2. In the 1960s, Thailand and Indonesia had very similar yields. But Indonesian yields increased rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s. Since 1990, Thai yields have, on average, been 44% lower than Indonesian yields.
3. In the 1960s, the Philippines had lower yields than Thailand, but the situation was reversed in the mid-1970s. Since 1990, Thai yields have, on average, been 20% lower than yields in the Philippines.
4. Malaysia’s productivity trajectory is closest to that of Thailand, with modest productivity growth from a somewhat higher base. Since 1990, Thai yields have, on average, been 20% lower than yields in Malaysia.
5. (Not shown on the graph – yields in Vietnam were similiar to those in Thailand until the mid-1970s; since then they have grown to a level slightly higher than Indonesia.)

The comparisons within Southeast Asia are not as stark as the comparisons between Thailand and north Asia – but Thailand’s lackluster performance is evident.

Chris Baker has provided some data (from the Thai Office of Agricultural Economics) that are slightly different to the IRRI data, and show a healthy jump to over 3 tonnes per hectare in 2008. One reader has suggested, via email, that recent increases in Thailand could be the result of rice price guarantee schemes that have encouraged farmers to spend more on fertiliser for rice production.

Thanks very much to those of you who have made very helpful contributions on this topic. I look forward to more discussion of this important issue.

To my mind some of the most compelling research conducted recently on food security and rural poverty in rural Laos, comes from Jutta Krahn’s research and the World Food Program’s 2007 study… The main conclusions from the WFP work are worth consideration.

The research suggests that the current model of promoting foreign direct investment into resource megaprojects in Laos, has not, to date, resulted in a broad-based improvement in food security or nutrition in the countryside.

It seems to me that instead of demanding more details on the options and alternatives to hydropower megaprojects (there are many good options and local initiatives), the onus should rather be upon the proponents of hydropower megaprojects, to provide legally enforceable guarantees, based on detailed, nationally and independently reviewed plans, studies, impact assessments, and baseline research, that their projects— which will inevitably undermine wild fishery stocks— will yet produce overall improvements in local nutrition, food security, incomes, and development options for immediately affected communities, while also providing solutions to the broader problems with child malnourishment and underdevelopment in rural and upland areas.

Given the track record in Laos and the Mekong region, with uncompensated and unmitigated socio-ecological externalities from large-scale hydropower development, including Nam Theun II, I would argue that the weight of existing evidence still favours the hydropower skeptics.

These are important points. Food security is, unquestionably, a high priority and threats to food security need to be taken very seriously in assessing the social and environmental impacts of projects. Here is a very short extract from the long and exceptionally detailed World Food Programme report that Keith refers to:

Although no single indicator can easily identify the food insecure, food insecure households can be described as farmers with low engagement in fishing and hunting or unskilled labourers. They practise upland farming on small plots of land in fragile areas with steep slopes. Often, they do not possess kitchen gardens. They are mostly asset poor, low-formally educated, illiterate and from non-Lao-Tai ethnic groups. They live in villages with little or no key infrastructure, and suffer from bad sanitary conditions. (page 94)

To me, this suggests that while food insecurity can certainly be compounded by inappropriate projects or programmes, its fundamental cause lies is unproductive agriculture in highly resource constrained environments (of course, resource constraints can be socially created as much as they are demographically driven).

This reminded me of a graph often referred to by one of my colleagues when I was involved in AusAID’s review of the Nam Theun 2 dam (click the graph for a larger version).

The graph plots GDP per-capita against the percentage of GDP derived from agriculture. The pattern is stark: the poorest countries (in terms of GDP per-capita) are those that derive higher proportions of their GDP from agricultural activity. Note the position of Laos. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if that pattern was repeated within Laos, with poverty and food insecurity most marked in provinces where the local economy is most dependent on agricultural production.

A standard development position would be that poverty and food insecurity is best addressed by facilitating the movement of people and resources out of low productivity agricultural pursuits and into other forms of economic activity. Laos is moving in this direction – according to the World Bank the percentage of GDP derived from agriculture was 61 percent in 1990 and 42 percent in 2007. Over a similar period the rate of poverty is reported to have declined from 45 percent to 33 percent.

So, for me, the key big picture question is this: does large-scale infrastructure investment facilitate this transition in a way that fairly balances positive and negative impacts? Is Keith right to argue that “the weight of existing evidence still favours the hydropower skeptics”?

The field research for this book was conducted in 2001-2003. A few years earlier the Lao government stopped issuing export permits for wood resin, although wood resin from Cambodia was still being exported to Thailand via Laos. The argument of the Lao government at the time was that wood resin harvesting was damaging the forests, and that the destructive practice should be discontinued. Unfortunately, however, once there was no longer a market for wood resin, many villagers decided to cut their resin trees down to sell the wood. So, the export ban did not have the effect of protecting the trees, as was seemingly expected. Moreover, logging companies also took advantage of the situation to convince villagers to allow them to cut down their resin trees.

In any case, through reviewing the literature, it became clear that some researchers believed that wood resin tree tapping was destructive, while others thought it was sustainable. It seemed appropriate to investigate wood resin tapping in detail. What I found was that in my field site wood resin trees were not dying as a result of being tapped. I also found that without exception, all the researchers who investigated wood resin tapping superficially–whether in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia or elsewhere–came to the conclusion that it was destructive to the trees. This appears to be based mainly on the visual effect of seeing big black burnt holes in the trunks of resin trees. It’s a bit like the negative impression many people have when they first see a burnt swidden fields. However, the reality associated with swidden agriculture are frequently much more complicated. I also found that all the researchers who investigated wood resin tapping in detail, regardless of which country, came to the conclusion that while it certainly is possible to kill a tree through resin tapping, the reality is that this rarely happens, and that despite the ugly black holes in the side of the tree trunks, the trees are very hardy and almost never succumb to tapping damage.

Unfortunately, the 2009 book is a bit expensive. It is, however, available through Amazon.com The publisher can also be contacted here.   

The following photos (from the book) show the tapping process as performed by one of the Brao tappers I worked with during my research. The fires are necessary to stimulate resin production, but tappers lose production if they over-burn. Therefore, they tend to only allow fires to burn about 30 seconds before putting them out. Then they wait between a few days and a week for the resin to seep into the wedge shaped holes in the trunks. The resin is then taken from the tap holes and the holes are burnt again. The full details can be found in the book.