transport networks and keep improving infrastructure in the region,” he said. He called for progress in the infrastructure projects, including the two railway lines connecting China’s Yunnan Province with the Lao capital, Vientiane, and the Thai capital, Bangkok. A cooperation blueprint released earlier said that the railway linking China and Thailand was part of a Pan-Asia network that would also cover Singapore (Liu, 2016).
Third, the LMC mechanism has promoted bilateral relations between China and the mainland ASEAN countries in various fields. Economically, China became the largest trading partner of Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Thailand, and the second largest for Laos. Bilateral trade between China and the five Mekong sub-region countries totaled US$220 billion in 2017, up 16% year on year. Some 80% of China’s rice imports are from the Mekong countries. Their fruit exports to China have increased by 21% annually over the past decade (Xinhua News Agency, 2018b). Politically, the close relations with the neighboring countries also improve China’s geopolitical conditions and the surrounding environment. Under the framework of the LMC, China can surely build a positive image by helping relatively underdeveloped countries of Mekong sub-region gain a better livelihood and achieve socio-economic development.
3.4.The Challenges and Risks of the LMC in the Mekong Sub-region
As a new platform for cooperation, the LMC mechanism has made great progress on the one hand, but it also faces many challenges on the other.
First, there are some differences and imbalances of power among the LMC member countries.
From within the mechanism, as mentioned above, the Mainland ASEAN countries have many common interests, and every country in the region has joined and cooperated in the LMC based on the same agreement, but each country has a different economic, social, and political background. This is the reason why the current views and demands, in addition to hopes for the future, are not the same. How to coordinate the interests of various member countries to promote the development of the LMC at the overall level so that the relevant countries can all benefit from it is a major issue. Another issue is regarding the Imbalance of Power within the LMC member countries. There is a fear between strong and weak nations: this is in part caused by the phenomenon of the miraculous economic growth of China, with GDP expansion exceeding 10% for more than 15 years, resulting in an asymmetry of power that makes the less robust economies cautious. Many ASEAN countries thus view China’s various projects, such as the Belt and Road Initiative and the AIIB, with suspicion. China invested in numerous massive infrastructure projects in many countries of the Mekong sub-region countries, especially in Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand. China’s influence in many countries has also created a different kind of fear that an imbalance in power will be caused and be an obstacle to the smooth development of the LMC. This is coupled with the fear that the prospect of mutual benefits may not result in an equitable share of economic benefits between the parties.
Second, there is an overlap of mechanisms in the Mekong sub-region.
Since the 1950s, a series of cooperation mechanisms and platforms in the Mekong River basin has been established. Their background, objectives, leading forces, and operating modes are very different. More importantly, most of the member countries of the LMC are also members of many of the same cooperative organizations and they want to be able to benefit from the various mechanisms. In fact, these mechanisms overlap with the LMC mechanism in the cooperation objectives and some specific cooperation projects, and there may be a series of problems in the actual operation process. This will be a challenge to ensure the smooth development of the LMC with the relevant cooperation mechanism.
Third, there is a misperception between peoples in the region.
There is a misperception on the numerous issues that spark misunderstandings between — one of the most influential ones is Cold War Memories that have imprinted the image of evil and danger. Another issue has to do with the South China Sea conflict, where one party views the other as an offender while the other party views its own actions as building a foundation infrastructure for safe navigation. In some ways, China herself has an identity bias of people with Chinese ethnicity. There are many people of Chinese descent and lineage in the Mekong sub-region countries, as well as Chinese immigrants. As time has passed, these people of Chinese descent have been integrated into the countries they settled in, and many have achieved high social, economic, financial, and political status. Accordingly, on many occasions, these people are considered by the PRC as native Chinese citizens who can act as agents to safeguard the interests of the PRC.
Fourth, a plethora of complex and unexpected problems cause great obstacles to cooperation in the LMC.
Among these, the water distribution of the Mekong River and environmental protection are the most interesting. For example, China’s dam and hydroelectric project on the Lancang River in the Upper Mekong sparked complaints from downstream states. These countries ruminate that the use of water resources in the Mekong River is a common concern of countries in the basin, and upstream development projects have had a severe impact on the environment and livelihoods along the river. Many hydropower dams in the tributaries and mainstream of Southeast Asia’s longest river cause unnatural fluctuations of water flow (Ganjanakhundee, 2018). However, the relations between the six countries are historically without much harmony, and perhaps the Chinese strategy to build dams on the Mekong River while also funding similar projects downstream threatens to stir up tensions between neighboring countries. Even in Cambodia, environmentalists purport that the change of water in Lake Tonle Sap impaired the exceptional abundance of fish stocks and the remarkable biodiversity of the country. From Lake Tonle Sap, the water passes through the famous region of the Mekong Delta, where salinity and drought were prevalent in 2016. The environmentalists have also noted that China was responsible for these problems because of its dams, which caused an excessively high rate of evaporation of water upstream of the Mekong. China’s proposal to open sections of the Mekong between Thailand and Laos to allow the passage of larger cargo ships has generated opposition from residents and conservation groups in Thailand, who have complained about this project which “would destroy” the Mekong River, killing fish spawning sites and disturbing migratory birds. Protests against the project have been held since December 2017 (Cambodgemeg, 2018). Being the country at the end of the Mekong River, Vietnam has suffered from a reduction in the volume and quality of fresh water, in parallel with salinity intrusion and drought in the Mekong Delta. The country believes this is also the result of water lose control in the upstream countries. Nevertheless, China released water from the Jinghong reservoir to help relieve drought as Hanoi requested in 2016 (Ganjanakhundee, 2018).
As water distribution is an important issue among the countries, the LMC’s meetings at different levels have identified a wide range of cooperation in the domains of politics, economics, and social needs in terms of the environment and water resource management, but critics say that the scheme has no clear regulation or protocol for water utilization (Ganjanakhundee, 2018). How to have better up- and downstream coordination, to take care of each other’s concerns and to strike the right balance between the economy and the environment, is a problem that has become a big challenge.
Moreover, there are unexpected risks such as natural disasters or accidents that may occur in dam operations. There have been many incidents that have occurred in the region. These incidents show that there is not enough cooperation within the region in terms of safety preparation, either to prevent these problems as much as possible or to come up with a quick response when unexpected incidents do occur. This is shown in the case of Laos. The Xepian Xe Nam Noy Dam in Attapeu Province, which was built on a tributary of the Mekong River and collapsed in July 2018, drowned the villages and towns downstream in more than five billion cubic meters of water (Olarn, 2018), causing severe damage to the people, homes, and constructions in the surrounding area. The damage was not just limited to Laos. Thousands of people along the Sekong River in Cambodia, which is downstream from the Xepian Xe Nam Noy River, were evacuated because of the high level of water in the river (Ellis-Petersen, 2018). This shows
