2018年4月13日星期五
2018年3月22日星期四
2018年2月2日星期五
2018年1月14日星期日
Public park planned for city’s riverside
Public park planned for city’s riverside
Vientiane authorities have agreed to the creation of a green lung for city residents and visitors in the form of a public park along the Mekong River in Sisattanak district.
The 31,500 square metre site is located behind the Don Chan Palace hotel and adjoins Chao Anouvong park.
According to the concession agreement signed on Monday between Vientiane’s Planning and Investment Department and Kolao Resort Company, the company will have a 30 year concession on the site. It is estimated that the park will cost US$10 million to build.
Kolao Group President Dr Khamkhan Naphavong told Vientiane Times on Wednesday “We will start work on the park this month and expect it to officially open in the middle of next year.”
“Under an agreement signed in March 2014, the project consisted only of a parking area, but that changed with the addition of more investment activities and budget with the aim of creating a leisure park. We signed the new agreement on Monday after it was approved by the Vientiane Mayor on January 5.”
“When construction is complete, the park will have a parking area, swimming pool, exercise area, children’s playground, modern food court and shops with facilities designed to attract tourists that will also sell handicrafts,” he said.
“The model has been designed and now we have to make a few adjustments. I hope the park will become another place that is attractive to visitors and provides a space where people can relax,” Dr Khamkhan added.
The Kolao Resort Company is also interested in developing part of Don Chan island next to the current concession site, where they are thinking of building a recreational water park. The company is ready to go ahead with this if the Vientiane authorities approve.
When asked about how the public could help to promote Visit Laos Year, Dr Khamkhan said litter was a major problem in Vientiane and places like Chao Anouvong park needed better management of cleaning.
Given that Vientiane is the capital and should be the flagship of the country’s attractions, with the Mekong riverbank fast becoming a magnet for visitors, the city should do more to roll out a welcome mat for Visit Laos Year, he said.
One of the places that draws visitors to the riverbank is Chao Anouvong park, which is very popular with local residents and people from outside the city.
The park is not only a place where people can go to stroll or exercise as they gaze at the sunset, it also has a bustling night market where people can buy a wide range of items, have a snack or buy a drink as they while away the evening in a relaxed setting.
~News courtesy of Vientiane Times~
Vientiane authorities have agreed to the creation of a green lung for city residents and visitors in the form of a public park along the Mekong River in Sisattanak district.
The 31,500 square metre site is located behind the Don Chan Palace hotel and adjoins Chao Anouvong park.
According to the concession agreement signed on Monday between Vientiane’s Planning and Investment Department and Kolao Resort Company, the company will have a 30 year concession on the site. It is estimated that the park will cost US$10 million to build.
Kolao Group President Dr Khamkhan Naphavong told Vientiane Times on Wednesday “We will start work on the park this month and expect it to officially open in the middle of next year.”
“Under an agreement signed in March 2014, the project consisted only of a parking area, but that changed with the addition of more investment activities and budget with the aim of creating a leisure park. We signed the new agreement on Monday after it was approved by the Vientiane Mayor on January 5.”
“When construction is complete, the park will have a parking area, swimming pool, exercise area, children’s playground, modern food court and shops with facilities designed to attract tourists that will also sell handicrafts,” he said.
“The model has been designed and now we have to make a few adjustments. I hope the park will become another place that is attractive to visitors and provides a space where people can relax,” Dr Khamkhan added.
The Kolao Resort Company is also interested in developing part of Don Chan island next to the current concession site, where they are thinking of building a recreational water park. The company is ready to go ahead with this if the Vientiane authorities approve.
When asked about how the public could help to promote Visit Laos Year, Dr Khamkhan said litter was a major problem in Vientiane and places like Chao Anouvong park needed better management of cleaning.
Given that Vientiane is the capital and should be the flagship of the country’s attractions, with the Mekong riverbank fast becoming a magnet for visitors, the city should do more to roll out a welcome mat for Visit Laos Year, he said.
One of the places that draws visitors to the riverbank is Chao Anouvong park, which is very popular with local residents and people from outside the city.
The park is not only a place where people can go to stroll or exercise as they gaze at the sunset, it also has a bustling night market where people can buy a wide range of items, have a snack or buy a drink as they while away the evening in a relaxed setting.
~News courtesy of Vientiane Times~
Airport bus service to start next week
Airport bus service to start next week
A new shuttle bus service, operating between Wattay International Airport and the Talat Sao Mall central bus station using vehicles donated by Kyoto City Bus, will begin on January 18.
Deputy Manager of the Vientiane City 2 Bus Service, Mr Sithiphon Chanthavong, said yesterday that shuttle buses will run daily from 9am until 10pm, following a trial run on Monday.
Buses will leave every 40 minutes from the airport and central bus station with passengers charged 15,000 kip for a one way trip.
The airport run is currently only serviced by taxis which charge passengers about 58,000 kip (US$7) to destinations in the city centre.
“The shuttle bus will set down at 16 bus stops from the airport along Souphanouvong Road, past the Presidential Palace and en route to the Talat Sao Mall central bus station,” Mr Sithiphon said.
Passengers will soon be able to download an app on Android smartphones to hire a taxi and check on bus routes and timetables after it is officially launched next week, he added.
The Vientiane City 2 Bus Service recently launched the Talat Sao Mall to Lao-ITECC route to encourage more people to use public transport and reduce traffic congestion in the city centre.
Passengers can catch a ride between Lao-ITECC and Talat Sao, with 18 stops in between, for just 4,000 kip one way.
Kyoto City Government donated 34 buses to the Vientiane Public Works and Transport Department at a ceremony held on November 29, 2016, at Kyoto City Hall Plaza in Nakagyo Ward, Kyoto, Japan.
The State Bus Enterprise reported recently that the number of passengers using public transport in urban areas rose by about 20 percent last year.
The public bus station in Vientiane handles 129 buses including 42 new Japanese buses, which is sufficient to cover the main routes through the city.
The enterprise is now installing new bus stops across the capital where buses will only set down and pick up passengers to prevent random hail and ride pickups which add to traffic congestion.
~News courtesy of Vientiane Times~
A new shuttle bus service, operating between Wattay International Airport and the Talat Sao Mall central bus station using vehicles donated by Kyoto City Bus, will begin on January 18.
Deputy Manager of the Vientiane City 2 Bus Service, Mr Sithiphon Chanthavong, said yesterday that shuttle buses will run daily from 9am until 10pm, following a trial run on Monday.
Buses will leave every 40 minutes from the airport and central bus station with passengers charged 15,000 kip for a one way trip.
The airport run is currently only serviced by taxis which charge passengers about 58,000 kip (US$7) to destinations in the city centre.
“The shuttle bus will set down at 16 bus stops from the airport along Souphanouvong Road, past the Presidential Palace and en route to the Talat Sao Mall central bus station,” Mr Sithiphon said.
Passengers will soon be able to download an app on Android smartphones to hire a taxi and check on bus routes and timetables after it is officially launched next week, he added.
The Vientiane City 2 Bus Service recently launched the Talat Sao Mall to Lao-ITECC route to encourage more people to use public transport and reduce traffic congestion in the city centre.
Passengers can catch a ride between Lao-ITECC and Talat Sao, with 18 stops in between, for just 4,000 kip one way.
Kyoto City Government donated 34 buses to the Vientiane Public Works and Transport Department at a ceremony held on November 29, 2016, at Kyoto City Hall Plaza in Nakagyo Ward, Kyoto, Japan.
The State Bus Enterprise reported recently that the number of passengers using public transport in urban areas rose by about 20 percent last year.
The public bus station in Vientiane handles 129 buses including 42 new Japanese buses, which is sufficient to cover the main routes through the city.
The enterprise is now installing new bus stops across the capital where buses will only set down and pick up passengers to prevent random hail and ride pickups which add to traffic congestion.
~News courtesy of Vientiane Times~
Laos dances to survive between China and Vietnam
Laos dances to survive between China and Vietnam
While often portrayed as a pliant client to its larger neighbors, Vientiane's balancing act is more astute than widely recognized
Lao dancers perform during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' gala dinner at the National Convention Center in Vientiane, Laos, September 7, 2016. Photo: AFP/Saul Loeb
With its sparse 6.7 million population, land-locked Laos is often cast as a passive victim of pell-mell Chinese expansionism, a rich source of raw materials its giant neighbor craves and a virtual truck stop on the way to Thailand and the more prosperous countries of mainland Southeast Asia.
Already forging ahead with the 414-kilometer Kunming-Vientiane railway, China now seems intent on poking a stick in Hanoi’s eye with plans for a major economic zone on the Bolaven Plateau, covering much of southern Champasak province between the Mekong River and Vietnam’s Central Highlands.
But unlike the railway, the scheme to transform an area supposedly five times the size of Hong Kong into a green wonderland built around industrial agriculture and tourism could well demonstrate that the popular picture of a hapless Laos caught in China’s embrace is both misleading and quite possibly wrong.
For starters, vast tracts of land on the southern panhandle’s 1,000-meter-high plateau, with its cooler climate, rich volcanic soil, stunning waterfalls and US$120 million-a-year coffee industry, have already been acquired in one way or another by the wealthy Vientiane elite.
Also, as much as it might try to facilitate such an ambitious and politically-sensitive project, Laos’ communist government is bound by its own laws not to allow more than 10,000 hectares for each individual investor or joint venture.
That might be avoided with the use of subsidiaries, but, as University of Wisconsin professor Ian Baird points out, a lesser known reality is that as all-powerful as the ruling Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) appears to be, it is the local governments that make the final decisions.
“If an investor runs into opposition, the central government is always going to back down,” says Baird, a long-time student of the communist state. “Local officials are deferential to the Vietnamese, but not to the Chinese, who can’t seem to translate all that economic activity into political power.”
The Chinese presence in southern Laos isn’t new. North of the plateau in neighboring Savannakhet province, China Minmetals is still operating the Sepon copper mine it acquired in 2009 as part of a wider US$1.4 billion deal to buy most of the assets from Australia’s indebted OZ Minerals.
But Chinese investors have already suffered setbacks with the failure of China Non-ferrous Metals International Mining Co (CNMIM) to proceed with a US$4 billion bauxite project in Champassak and the significant downsizing of a major urban development project in Vientiane, the capital.
Baird and International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) researcher Danielle Tan have separately reached the same conclusion that Lao authorities are playing Vietnam off against China, a strategy that could determine Laos’ long-term future as an independent state.
Lao President Bounnhang Vorachith with Vietnam’s President Tran Dai Quang at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi, Vietnam December 20, 2017. Photo: Reuters/Kham
Indeed, there are strong indications that even the US$5.4 billion Kumning-Vientiane railway may not have got off the ground without the Lao government agreeing to a similar 220-kilometer rail link from Savannakhet to the Vietnamese border town of Lao Bao.
The electrified double-track line, to be built by Malaysia’s Giant Consolidated Ltd, will follow Highway 9 which already serves as a trade corridor between northeast Thailand and the South China Sea port of Danang in central Vietnam.
Chinese money may be welcome, says Baird, but it isn’t everything. More important are the Lao regime’s ties with Vietnam, forged during the Indochina War, and memories of China’s efforts from 1979-1985 to foment an anti-government rebellion among Hmong tribal holdouts in Laos.
Indeed, the 10th Lao People’s Revolutionary Party Congress in early 2016 saw the quiet removal from the 11-member Politburo of deputy prime minister and eighth-ranked Somsavat Lengsavad, 72, a wealthy Sino-Lao businessman regarded as the last true Beijing loyalist on the party’s highest body.
Most Politburo members are Vietnamese-trained war veterans, including general secretary and president Bounnhang Vorachith, 80, who joined the revolutionary Pathet Lao in 1952, later serving as its chief political commissar and then as governor of his native Savannakhet province.
One notable exception is popular prime minister Thongloun Sisoulith, 72, who was educated in the Soviet Union and Vietnam before joining the government, rising to state planning minister, deputy prime minister and foreign minister in the early 2000s.
Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith (R) of Laos meets with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at Great Hall of the People in Beijing, November 28, 2016. Photo: Reuters/Thomas Peter
Even today, Lao officials still study in Vietnam, not China, which means the Vietnamese retain more clout in the Lao countryside and are considered superior to the Chinese, politically and culturally, in dealing with provincial governments and local villagers.
Stalled up to now by a lack of funding, China’s involvement in the Bolaven project was grandly described in a recent Chinese news release as “a new step in the Sino-Laos strategic partnership,” language that rival Hanoi would not have appreciated.
The venture is spearheaded by China’s Guangcai Investment Group, a social entrepreneurship program created in 1995 by private businessmen to “combat poverty and contribute to regional development.” In other words, to put a happier face on Chinese investment.
Guangcai’s apparent partners in the project are state-owned China Communications Construction and China Construction Engineering, the China Development Bank, the Ex-Im Bank of China and Hong Kong-based Galaxy Financial Holdings.
Until now, Chinese migration and capital has focused on the northern Lao provinces of Luang Namtha, Oudomxay, Bokeo and Phongsaly provinces, transforming the border region, previously known for semi-subsistence farming, into a market-orientated agricultural economy.
The once-remote village of Boten, the staging ground for a planned cross-border economic zone, is also the starting point for the new China-built railway and the 990-kilometer expressway linking the Yunnan province capital of Kunming with Thailand’s Chiang Rai-Bangkok highway.
A Lao Hmong hill tribe woman and child at the border town of Boten, a special economic zone hired by China in Luang Namtha, Laos. Photo: AFP/Hoang Dinh Nam
Following the same road the Chinese built in the 1960s to supply Thai communist guerrillas, the highway was finally completed in 2013 with the opening of the Ban Houay Say-Chiang Rai bridge across the Mekong River, the fourth to span the waterway.
In opening the way for an onrush of Chinese companies and migrants, it is that north-south economic corridor and other improvements to the border road network that has critics questioning whether Laos is ceding sovereignty to its northern region to China.
While private firms have built casinos and invested in other tourism ventures, China’s state-owned firms have concentrated on agriculture, particularly rubber cultivation, hydro-electric power and mining, notably copper, gold, bauxite, lignite, tin, iron and zinc.
More than a third of Chinese investment has gone into small-scale hydropower projects on Mekong tributaries under a build-operate-transfer model, notably different to China’s involvement in Indonesia’s badly-flawed 10,000-megawatt build-transfer power program spanning 2004-2014.
But it is also the main financier for three planned run-of-the-river projects on the mainstream Mekong, including the 920-megawatt (MW) Pak Beng plant in western Oudomxay province, and the 1,320MW Pak Lay and 700MW Sanakham ventures further downstream in Xayaboury.
While Vietnam’s foreign direct investment, mostly in hydro-power, mining, transportation and plantations, has slowed since a strong surge in 2005-2010, it still claims to match China’s total US$5.3 billion, with Thailand, Laos’ main hydropower customer, trailing at US$4.4 billion.
A handout picture of the Nam Theun 2 hydropower station in the Lao central province of Khammouane. Photo: AFP/Nam Theun
Power Company Vietnam’s biggest project is a US$522 million potash plant in southern Khammounan province, but Star Telecom’s Unitel network, a joint venture between Hanoi’s military-run Viettel and Lao Asia Telecom, controls half of Laos’ telecommunications market with annual revenues of US$700 million.
Another major investment milestone was the completion in 2016 of a 190-kilometer, US$240 million cross-border power transmission line linking the Vietnamese-funded Xekaman I and 3 hydro-plants near southern Attapeu province with Vietnam’s Central Highlands capital of Pleiku.
China clearly has the financial advantage, to a point where economists have expressed public concern that China’s outward direct investment deals do not provide sufficient returns and that state-owned enterprises are not held responsible if a project fails.
In an unusually critical opinion piece in 2015 – two years after the unveiling of the One Belt, One Road initiative that lies behind many of China’s new investments — Peking University professor Yiping Huang pointed out that such “blind spending” was risky and a waste of foreign reserves.
Critics also note that while Southeast Asia needs to spend an estimated US$8 trillion on infrastructure over the next decade, many recipient governments lack the ability to craft bankable development plans, either because of inefficiency or corruption.
That may apply to Laos, given its limited human resources, but Indonesia has also been found wanting with China’s showcase Jakarta-Bandung fast-rail project struggling to get off the ground because of the same land issues it is expected to face on Laos’ Bolaven Plateau.
Chinese and Vietnamese investment has clearly had a harmful impact on the environment and on local communities, with illegal logging decimating the country’s forests and thousands of villagers being uprooted for hydro-dams and industrial agricultural projects.
But IIAS researcher Tan maintained in a 2014 research paper that Laos’ communist leaders have little to fear from their giant northern neighbor and that they may well be paying a worthwhile price for China to act as mediator between Laos and the global economy.
~courtesy of Asia Times~
While often portrayed as a pliant client to its larger neighbors, Vientiane's balancing act is more astute than widely recognized
Lao dancers perform during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' gala dinner at the National Convention Center in Vientiane, Laos, September 7, 2016. Photo: AFP/Saul Loeb
With its sparse 6.7 million population, land-locked Laos is often cast as a passive victim of pell-mell Chinese expansionism, a rich source of raw materials its giant neighbor craves and a virtual truck stop on the way to Thailand and the more prosperous countries of mainland Southeast Asia.
Already forging ahead with the 414-kilometer Kunming-Vientiane railway, China now seems intent on poking a stick in Hanoi’s eye with plans for a major economic zone on the Bolaven Plateau, covering much of southern Champasak province between the Mekong River and Vietnam’s Central Highlands.
But unlike the railway, the scheme to transform an area supposedly five times the size of Hong Kong into a green wonderland built around industrial agriculture and tourism could well demonstrate that the popular picture of a hapless Laos caught in China’s embrace is both misleading and quite possibly wrong.
For starters, vast tracts of land on the southern panhandle’s 1,000-meter-high plateau, with its cooler climate, rich volcanic soil, stunning waterfalls and US$120 million-a-year coffee industry, have already been acquired in one way or another by the wealthy Vientiane elite.
Also, as much as it might try to facilitate such an ambitious and politically-sensitive project, Laos’ communist government is bound by its own laws not to allow more than 10,000 hectares for each individual investor or joint venture.
That might be avoided with the use of subsidiaries, but, as University of Wisconsin professor Ian Baird points out, a lesser known reality is that as all-powerful as the ruling Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) appears to be, it is the local governments that make the final decisions.
“If an investor runs into opposition, the central government is always going to back down,” says Baird, a long-time student of the communist state. “Local officials are deferential to the Vietnamese, but not to the Chinese, who can’t seem to translate all that economic activity into political power.”
The Chinese presence in southern Laos isn’t new. North of the plateau in neighboring Savannakhet province, China Minmetals is still operating the Sepon copper mine it acquired in 2009 as part of a wider US$1.4 billion deal to buy most of the assets from Australia’s indebted OZ Minerals.
But Chinese investors have already suffered setbacks with the failure of China Non-ferrous Metals International Mining Co (CNMIM) to proceed with a US$4 billion bauxite project in Champassak and the significant downsizing of a major urban development project in Vientiane, the capital.
Baird and International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) researcher Danielle Tan have separately reached the same conclusion that Lao authorities are playing Vietnam off against China, a strategy that could determine Laos’ long-term future as an independent state.
Lao President Bounnhang Vorachith with Vietnam’s President Tran Dai Quang at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi, Vietnam December 20, 2017. Photo: Reuters/Kham
Indeed, there are strong indications that even the US$5.4 billion Kumning-Vientiane railway may not have got off the ground without the Lao government agreeing to a similar 220-kilometer rail link from Savannakhet to the Vietnamese border town of Lao Bao.
The electrified double-track line, to be built by Malaysia’s Giant Consolidated Ltd, will follow Highway 9 which already serves as a trade corridor between northeast Thailand and the South China Sea port of Danang in central Vietnam.
Chinese money may be welcome, says Baird, but it isn’t everything. More important are the Lao regime’s ties with Vietnam, forged during the Indochina War, and memories of China’s efforts from 1979-1985 to foment an anti-government rebellion among Hmong tribal holdouts in Laos.
Indeed, the 10th Lao People’s Revolutionary Party Congress in early 2016 saw the quiet removal from the 11-member Politburo of deputy prime minister and eighth-ranked Somsavat Lengsavad, 72, a wealthy Sino-Lao businessman regarded as the last true Beijing loyalist on the party’s highest body.
Most Politburo members are Vietnamese-trained war veterans, including general secretary and president Bounnhang Vorachith, 80, who joined the revolutionary Pathet Lao in 1952, later serving as its chief political commissar and then as governor of his native Savannakhet province.
One notable exception is popular prime minister Thongloun Sisoulith, 72, who was educated in the Soviet Union and Vietnam before joining the government, rising to state planning minister, deputy prime minister and foreign minister in the early 2000s.
Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith (R) of Laos meets with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at Great Hall of the People in Beijing, November 28, 2016. Photo: Reuters/Thomas Peter
Even today, Lao officials still study in Vietnam, not China, which means the Vietnamese retain more clout in the Lao countryside and are considered superior to the Chinese, politically and culturally, in dealing with provincial governments and local villagers.
Stalled up to now by a lack of funding, China’s involvement in the Bolaven project was grandly described in a recent Chinese news release as “a new step in the Sino-Laos strategic partnership,” language that rival Hanoi would not have appreciated.
The venture is spearheaded by China’s Guangcai Investment Group, a social entrepreneurship program created in 1995 by private businessmen to “combat poverty and contribute to regional development.” In other words, to put a happier face on Chinese investment.
Guangcai’s apparent partners in the project are state-owned China Communications Construction and China Construction Engineering, the China Development Bank, the Ex-Im Bank of China and Hong Kong-based Galaxy Financial Holdings.
Until now, Chinese migration and capital has focused on the northern Lao provinces of Luang Namtha, Oudomxay, Bokeo and Phongsaly provinces, transforming the border region, previously known for semi-subsistence farming, into a market-orientated agricultural economy.
The once-remote village of Boten, the staging ground for a planned cross-border economic zone, is also the starting point for the new China-built railway and the 990-kilometer expressway linking the Yunnan province capital of Kunming with Thailand’s Chiang Rai-Bangkok highway.
A Lao Hmong hill tribe woman and child at the border town of Boten, a special economic zone hired by China in Luang Namtha, Laos. Photo: AFP/Hoang Dinh Nam
Following the same road the Chinese built in the 1960s to supply Thai communist guerrillas, the highway was finally completed in 2013 with the opening of the Ban Houay Say-Chiang Rai bridge across the Mekong River, the fourth to span the waterway.
In opening the way for an onrush of Chinese companies and migrants, it is that north-south economic corridor and other improvements to the border road network that has critics questioning whether Laos is ceding sovereignty to its northern region to China.
While private firms have built casinos and invested in other tourism ventures, China’s state-owned firms have concentrated on agriculture, particularly rubber cultivation, hydro-electric power and mining, notably copper, gold, bauxite, lignite, tin, iron and zinc.
More than a third of Chinese investment has gone into small-scale hydropower projects on Mekong tributaries under a build-operate-transfer model, notably different to China’s involvement in Indonesia’s badly-flawed 10,000-megawatt build-transfer power program spanning 2004-2014.
But it is also the main financier for three planned run-of-the-river projects on the mainstream Mekong, including the 920-megawatt (MW) Pak Beng plant in western Oudomxay province, and the 1,320MW Pak Lay and 700MW Sanakham ventures further downstream in Xayaboury.
While Vietnam’s foreign direct investment, mostly in hydro-power, mining, transportation and plantations, has slowed since a strong surge in 2005-2010, it still claims to match China’s total US$5.3 billion, with Thailand, Laos’ main hydropower customer, trailing at US$4.4 billion.
A handout picture of the Nam Theun 2 hydropower station in the Lao central province of Khammouane. Photo: AFP/Nam Theun
Power Company Vietnam’s biggest project is a US$522 million potash plant in southern Khammounan province, but Star Telecom’s Unitel network, a joint venture between Hanoi’s military-run Viettel and Lao Asia Telecom, controls half of Laos’ telecommunications market with annual revenues of US$700 million.
Another major investment milestone was the completion in 2016 of a 190-kilometer, US$240 million cross-border power transmission line linking the Vietnamese-funded Xekaman I and 3 hydro-plants near southern Attapeu province with Vietnam’s Central Highlands capital of Pleiku.
China clearly has the financial advantage, to a point where economists have expressed public concern that China’s outward direct investment deals do not provide sufficient returns and that state-owned enterprises are not held responsible if a project fails.
In an unusually critical opinion piece in 2015 – two years after the unveiling of the One Belt, One Road initiative that lies behind many of China’s new investments — Peking University professor Yiping Huang pointed out that such “blind spending” was risky and a waste of foreign reserves.
Critics also note that while Southeast Asia needs to spend an estimated US$8 trillion on infrastructure over the next decade, many recipient governments lack the ability to craft bankable development plans, either because of inefficiency or corruption.
That may apply to Laos, given its limited human resources, but Indonesia has also been found wanting with China’s showcase Jakarta-Bandung fast-rail project struggling to get off the ground because of the same land issues it is expected to face on Laos’ Bolaven Plateau.
Chinese and Vietnamese investment has clearly had a harmful impact on the environment and on local communities, with illegal logging decimating the country’s forests and thousands of villagers being uprooted for hydro-dams and industrial agricultural projects.
But IIAS researcher Tan maintained in a 2014 research paper that Laos’ communist leaders have little to fear from their giant northern neighbor and that they may well be paying a worthwhile price for China to act as mediator between Laos and the global economy.
~courtesy of Asia Times~
2018年1月13日星期六
South East Asia in the grip of chilly weather
South East Asia in the grip of chilly weather
Temperatures across South-east Asia have dipped beyond the norm in recent days, with non-stop rain and strong winds contributing to chillier tropics.
The thermostat has dropped to as low as 22°C in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore and 17ºC in Bangkok, cold bouts have been reported in Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines, and ice slabs have even been found in parts of Myanmar.
The weather has become so chilly that Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak tweeted on Friday (Jan 12): "Wow, Malaysia's weather is really cold today, just like in Jeddah!" He had just returned from a trip to Saudi Arabia.
The Malaysian Meteorological Department attributed the chill to the north-east monsoon, but did not expect temperatures to dip further. The agency forecasts all-day rain to last until Sunday in Kuala Lumpur.
Thailand has been experiencing a cold snap since last month, with fog blanketing its northern regions and frost forming on mountains.
In Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital, the temperature fell to as low as 8ºC, the lowest this winter for the city.
Though Cambodia was also struck by the cold weather this week, it was not as bad as last month, when the temperature plunge caused a sweater-shopping frenzy, and baby elephants had to wear hand-knitted coats.
The Philippines has been experiencing generally colder weather too, a result of the El Nino-La Nina weather dynamics, and the chilling Arctic air called the polar vortex. "We have seen a cold blast in the Pacific and Atlantic regions," said the local weather bureau's forecaster Nikkos Penaranda. The lowest temperature recorded recently was 12.2ºC in the northern city of Baguio on Jan 1.
Meanwhile, Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency said it recorded moderately lower-than-usual temperatures in the Riau Islands, an Indonesian province closest to Singapore, and in Nusa Tenggara Timur, east of the country's main tourist island of Bali. On Friday, the two locations registered temperatures of 23ºC to 25ºC.
All other provinces are seeing relatively normal temperatures, state weather forecaster Risda Novikarani told The Straits Times.
Over in South Asia, the northern parts of India were also in the midst of a cold spell, but meteorological officials said this was well within the range for winter months. "Temperatures have fallen and the cold wave condition is more severe in January than December," said Mahesh Palawat, director of private weather forecaster Skymet. "It is a normal winter."
According to India's Meteorological Department, minimum temperatures in most parts of northern India this week continued to be between 5ºC and 10ºC, and would remain so until Monday (Jan 15).
~The Straits Times/Asia News Network~
Temperatures across South-east Asia have dipped beyond the norm in recent days, with non-stop rain and strong winds contributing to chillier tropics.
The thermostat has dropped to as low as 22°C in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore and 17ºC in Bangkok, cold bouts have been reported in Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines, and ice slabs have even been found in parts of Myanmar.
The weather has become so chilly that Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak tweeted on Friday (Jan 12): "Wow, Malaysia's weather is really cold today, just like in Jeddah!" He had just returned from a trip to Saudi Arabia.
The Malaysian Meteorological Department attributed the chill to the north-east monsoon, but did not expect temperatures to dip further. The agency forecasts all-day rain to last until Sunday in Kuala Lumpur.
Thailand has been experiencing a cold snap since last month, with fog blanketing its northern regions and frost forming on mountains.
In Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital, the temperature fell to as low as 8ºC, the lowest this winter for the city.
Though Cambodia was also struck by the cold weather this week, it was not as bad as last month, when the temperature plunge caused a sweater-shopping frenzy, and baby elephants had to wear hand-knitted coats.
The Philippines has been experiencing generally colder weather too, a result of the El Nino-La Nina weather dynamics, and the chilling Arctic air called the polar vortex. "We have seen a cold blast in the Pacific and Atlantic regions," said the local weather bureau's forecaster Nikkos Penaranda. The lowest temperature recorded recently was 12.2ºC in the northern city of Baguio on Jan 1.
Meanwhile, Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency said it recorded moderately lower-than-usual temperatures in the Riau Islands, an Indonesian province closest to Singapore, and in Nusa Tenggara Timur, east of the country's main tourist island of Bali. On Friday, the two locations registered temperatures of 23ºC to 25ºC.
All other provinces are seeing relatively normal temperatures, state weather forecaster Risda Novikarani told The Straits Times.
Over in South Asia, the northern parts of India were also in the midst of a cold spell, but meteorological officials said this was well within the range for winter months. "Temperatures have fallen and the cold wave condition is more severe in January than December," said Mahesh Palawat, director of private weather forecaster Skymet. "It is a normal winter."
According to India's Meteorological Department, minimum temperatures in most parts of northern India this week continued to be between 5ºC and 10ºC, and would remain so until Monday (Jan 15).
~The Straits Times/Asia News Network~
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