New Mandala

A chinese boat unloading apples in Chiang Saen in 1994

Timothy Hamlin of the Stimson Center has written this update on commercial navigation on the upper-Mekong.  It seems that the environmentally dubious project of blasting the Mekong rapids between southern China and northern Thailand is now all but complete, making the way for a greater influx [...]

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In envisioning an integrated Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS), the governments of the six riparian countries and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) regard the “connecting of nations” as contributing to the “linking of people” and vice-versa.Strategy papers and other programme documents reiterate that the goals of regionalisation are not only to enhance “connectivity” and “competitiveness” of [...]

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Courtesy of Des Ball at the ANU here is the Burmese crossed-loop HF/VHF DF system located about 500 metres up the Mekong from Ban Sop Ruak (the so-called “golden triangle”). It is presumably for tracking the radio communications of vessels moving up and down the Mekong, but can be used for locating any HF or VHF transmissions in northwestern [...]

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The bilateral trade agreement between Thailand and China came into force on 1 October 2003. As has been pointed out, ((Bangkok Pundit provides an informative discussion of Thailand’s trade agreements. Pundit’s research provided me with a lot of pointers for this post!)) calling it a “free trade” agreement is something of a misnomer as it only applied to [...]

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Late last month I attended the conference on A Greater Mekong: Poverty, Integration and Development at the University of Sydney. The conference was organised by the Australian Mekong Resource Centre and AusAID and hosted a range of bureucratic, academic and activist presentations on the state of Mekong region development (a list of papers is available [...]

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[Johpa Deumlaokeng is the nom de plume of a long-time Southeast Asia resident and commentator]
This roving correspondent attended the University of Washington’s (UW) 20th Anniversary celebration of their Southeast Asian Center with a series of seminars honoring noted anthropologist Prof. Charles “Biff” Keyes.  Prof. Keyes is a Cornell grad (as are most American Southeast Asian specialists of his [...]

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Irrespective of how much opium production has really contracted, the GMS remains a frontrunner in the global narcotics trade. In the opium eradication era, regional drug networks have found respite in chemicals comprising both basic materials and final products. The [Greater Mekong Subregioin's] strategic developmental position in between two industrial giants is being exploited for [...]

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The most recent monthly installment at Mekong Currents is a wide-ranging discussion titled “What to do with Burma?“.  It focuses on regional efforts to integrate and develop Southeast Asia’s most controversial country.�
Written by Rosalia Sciortino - a long-time Southeast Asia analyst who is currently an Associate Professor at Mahidol University - this month’s essay overviews Burma’s place in the development of the Greater [...]

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Regular readers may have noticed a new addition to our “feature links.” Mekong Currents is is a monthly column on Mekong issues distributed by IPS Asia-Pacific. It features some up-to-date accounts of developments in the Mekong region. When new monthly columns appear we will feature them on New Mandala. Mekong Currents is available via the [...]

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Environmental management is a sensitive issue, as some recent discussions on New Mandala have indicated. This is especially the case in relation to the management of “watersheds.” Relatively pristine upland forests often seen as the key to the sustainability of downstream water supplies. There is no bigger watershed in southeast Asia than the Mekong, and discussions [...]

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