spread of Chinese influence.
At the same time, Japan has actively engaged in the development of the Mekong sub-region since the 1990s, not only for economic reasons but also diplomatic ones. Japan has opened a new dialogue with the countries of the Mekong region that was proposed as a concept in 2007. It began at the Foreign Ministers’ Meeting held in Tokyo in January 2008. In September 2009, the First Mekong–Japan Summit was hosted in Tokyo, at which the Tokyo Declaration of the First Meeting between the Heads of the Government of Japan and the Countries of the Mekong Region (hereafter, the 2009 Tokyo Declaration) and the Mekong–Japan Action Plan 63 were adopted. It was then agreed that the nations would hold annual summit meetings, periodic foreign ministers’ meetings, economic ministers’ meetings, and annual meetings of senior officials.
Moreover, the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) is another crucial cooperation of the Mekong sub-region established in 1992. The aim is to strengthen economic links and collaboration between China (Yunnan Province), Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region joined the program in 2004. The GMS Program has focused primarily on promoting and facilitating economic and infrastructure development — transportation systems and other economic networks and corridors; energy grids and power interconnections; cross-border movement of goods and people; and telecommunication links — with the aim of achieving greater sub-regional integration. The GMS was driven by the following three strategies:
1.Strengthening connectivity through physical infrastructure and the development of economic corridors.
2.Improving competitiveness through market integration and the facilitation of cross-border trade and travel.
3.Building a sense of community by addressing shared social and environmental concerns.
The GMS has the Asian Development Bank (ADB) as its main financial support. The ADB also assists in research and gives consultations on GMS. The ADB was established with the help of the US. One of the purposes was to give funding to support ASEAN countries to improve the economy and become independent. The other reason was to discourage and prevent a relationship with the communist party. The US pushed Japan into a leading role in the ADB and other main projects. This included setting up a new framework. The first president of the ADB was Japanese, and has continued to be Japanese. Japan has increased its influence in this region by providing a support fund to the ADB to help other countries’ development through various projects through the GMS Program.
Moreover, there are additional frameworks of cooperation among other countries in the Mekong Sub-region. For instance, the Mekong–Ganga Cooperation (Lower Mekong countries and India), the Mekong–Republic of Korea Partnership, and the ASEAN Mekong Basin Development Cooperation (AMBDC), all of which illustrate the amount of interest of other countries in this region and their hope to develop their own economies.
China showed interest in taking part in developing the Mekong sub-region when it joined the GMS to help the Chinese economy and to improve its connectivity. In 2000, the China State Council launched the Western Development Strategy for encouraging economic development in the western provinces because it is an area that is far from the sea, which makes development slower and more difficult. According to this policy, China sees Yunnan Province as the keystone to interconnect Southeast Asia and South Asia. China can use the Mekong River to send goods from Southern China to the sea of Burma, Vietnam, and Thailand. This will help the Chinese economy to gain access to the Mekong sub-region’s economy. Goods and labor will be transferred between the regions, and jobs and new markets will be created. China’s economy could benefit from this jump in growth by becoming the premier partner of ASEAN and the Mekong sub-region. China has also become a big investor in Cambodia and Laos, but it still has to compete with other countries that have been investing in this region for many years, for e.g. Japan, Korea, and Malaysia. Nevertheless, the main role of the cooperation framework is that the GMS still belongs to the ADB, which is led by Japan, along with the US. In the Mekong sub-region, many attempts have been made to exclude China and to expand American and Japanese influence in the sub-region to counter China, which has made the Mekong River sub-region an arena for power competition. These interventions from powerful countries such as the US and Japan have also forced China to pay more and more attention to this mainland ASEAN sub-region.
In addition, in recent years, China’s economy has consistently grown, making the country increase production capacity to keep up with the growth of the economy and the domestic labor market. The continuous production of steel, cement, aluminum, and electronics has created excess capacity in China. The biggest problem that is haunting China is steel. China’s unused steel capacity equals the total annual output of the next four biggest producers (Japan, India, America, and Russia) combined. (The Economist, 2017) During the central economy meeting of China, in December 2015, the main priority was to solve the problem of excess capacity. In 2016, China finally came up with the policy of reducing its production capacity by buying and taking over steel and charcoal companies to reduce stock and to increase the price of steel, allowing steel companies survive. (Wen, 2016) Moreover, China has executed an international policy to strengthen international partnership. By the end of 2016, China had signed several production capacity cooperation documents with 27 other countries in Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe (Zhang, 2016).
In the Mekong sub-region, most countries are developing ones, creating grounds for improvement, especially in infrastructure and energy development, which need a lot of investment and raw materials for every development project. So, the Mekong sub-region is considered as a potential export and investment market for China to help its economy. In addition, there is the Lancang–Mekong River’s importance in connecting Europe through Southeast Asia and beyond in the Belt and Road Initiatives launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping.
This has led to the establishment of the LMC Mechanism.
On the November 13, 2014, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang formally proposed the initiative at the 17th China–ASEAN Summit, held in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar, to establish a framework regarding the Lancang–Mekong River Dialogue and Cooperation. Just one year later, in November 2015, the LMC mechanism was founded. Its founding members were China and five other Mekong states — Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam — all also Mainland ASEAN countries. In reality, the genesis of the LMC was Thailand’s proposal at the Conference on Sustainable Development in the Lancang–Mekong sub-region, which aimed to organize ways of addressing challenges, such as natural disasters, faced by all six Mekong riparian countries and to explore possible cooperation for sustainable development (Department of Government Public Relations, 2013). Even though the Thai Foreign Ministry was merely mentioned, in the press release saying that the LMC framework was “initiated by Thailand and endorsed by China” (Minister of Foreign Affairs of Thailand, 2015), China has acknowledged that Thailand first proposed the preliminary idea and that the Chinese proposal was echoing Thailand’s initiative on the sustainable development of the Lancang–Mekong sub-region (Li, 2014). The five countries in the Mekong sub-region all welcomed the proposal.
It is because of the positive responses from the Mekong countries that the First LMC Senior Officials’ Meeting was held in Beijing on April 6, 2015. It was co-chaired by China and Thailand. It fully displayed that since its conception, the LMC had been driven by the common aspiration of China and the Mekong River countries, as well as Mainland ASEAN countries. The participants at the meeting discussed the concept paper for creating the framework, including the objectives, direction, and priority areas.
The Second LMC Senior Officials’ Meeting was held in Chiang Rai, Thailand, on August 21, 2015. It was again co-chaired by China and Thailand. The meeting discussed the concept paper for the creation of the LMC, the Early Harvest Projects, and the arrangement for the First Foreign Ministers’ Meeting. At the meeting, China’s Vice Foreign Minister put forward a three-point proposal on the LMC that can be summarized as follows:
1.To cement a sense of
