Liam Lee
Laos, a country dubbed as the crossroads of Asia, will be the first country connected with China through railway despite its weak national strength in Indochina peninsula. Going south from a border city through the thick forest, I finally arrived in Vientiane, the capital of Laos at the bank of Mekong River, to explore the expectations, puzzle and struggles of Laos in her way to modernization and in preservation of her special culture and natural environment.
Boten –A city with warmth and chill
The rainy season this year comes later than usual. Short after the noon on 13 July, a heat wave stroke the city and people in Shangyong Street, Mohan which is close to Laos had their regular noon break. Ma Xiaoling, 33 years old, runs a small restaurant together with her husband in this small town. It is already a common scene for her to see the coming of large number of railway workers from Sichuan Province, China.
Though coming a lit bit later than expected, the railway in her mouth has a special meaning. Stretching out from the north to the south, the railway connects the city of Yuxi, Kunming in China and the line from Bangkok to Nong khai. It extends 414.33 km after coming out of the boundary line of China. With the design speed of 160 kilometers per hour, it only takes 3 hours from Mohan town to Vientiane when it serves the public after two years. It can be called a blessing when compared with the three-day plus two-night journey by the No.13 national highway of Laos. Jiang Zaidong, the Chinese ambassador to Laos, reveals that by the end of July 2019, the civil construction of the Sino-Lao railway had been completed 73.9 percent.
Just outside the entrance of the tunnel with Dai style, Luo Hengfu, project manager of China Railway Bureau Group Company, is considering how to build a beautiful scene featuring green plants and colorful flowers all the year outside the tunnel. As an experienced engineer who was in charged of the construction of Qingzang part of Yangpachen Tunnel, leads his team to restore the surrounding environment. Builders of the Sino-Lao railway has noticed the different scene at both sides of this railway at a time when others are doubting the possibility of making the railway integrated into the environment harmoniously.
According to Luo, they are doing experiments picking and breeding plants suitable for the local environment in an attempt to the integrate the tunnel’s outside appearance into the surrounding landscape. He also says honestly that programs like tunnels construction would inevitably change the rate of seepage of water from mountains, while the sewage acquired by the construction would be discharged after five processing steps right on spot.
As China is making her rules on environmental protection increasingly strict than ever before in recent years, together with rising awareness of environmental protection of public, environmental standards on the large infrastructure construction that passes through animal habitat are rising, too. The Sino-Lao Railway has a Wild Elephant Valley station in China which is near the Asian Elephant Nature Reserve. When design the station, designers make the two ends of the station pass through the mountains with tunnels rather than directly cross the original forest. “This construction is all underground making it looks like a pipe through the mountain, bringing down the negative influence on local Eco-system and avoiding disturbing the Asian elephant”, said by Luo Min, chief engineer of Yuxi-Boten Railway Project Department in China Railway No.3 Engineering Group.
On 29 July, 2015, Reply of the State Development and Reform Commission on the Feasibility Study Report on the Newly Built Yuxi to Mohan Railway issued by China National Development and Reform Commission approved the feasible construction plan of the Yumo-Mohan railway. In March of the same year, the second environmental impact assessment of this project was open to public for 11 days, though the details are not available now. China Railway Eryuan Engineering Group, which is responsible for environmental assessment report, points out that the project meets the planning requirements and it is feasible from the perspective of environmental protection, because the negative effects of the project like noise, vibration and impacts on ecosystem, surface water, groundwater and so on can be effectively controlled and eased after implementing the measures listed in the environmental protection report.
Born in 1981, Zheng Jinxuan, a senior engineer of Academy of forestry Investigation and Planning inYunnan province, has written a public paper on the environmental assessment of the China section of the Sino-Lao railway. According to his investigation, the main protected objects listed in the reserve, such as some plants, local unique plants and their growing environment are not directly included in the project construction area. 10 species of second-class protected wild animal in China are distributed in this area. Although the protected object, savanna shrubs and grass in dry and hot valley, is engaged here, the affected habitat area is only 2.22hm2. He gives an important proposal that the bare surface should be planted with the original plants in local ecosystem to restore the original forest vegetation after the completion of the construction,.
For people living in Mohan, they are concerned more about whether the railway will bring positive changes to this border town or not than environmental protection. “ Xiao Nanguo”, a wholesale store to sell Lao and Thailand’s local specialty goods, is operated by two brothers. They explain the their shop name that “Xiao” means a small place and “Nanguo” is interpreted as a small country in the south. Laos’ in-season honey in their shop will not be seized even if it is imported illegally.
The same as most people in Mohan, this family feel evenly about the influx of railway construction army but they also report that the construction in Mohan lagged in the past. No one thinks that it would become a railway hub one day. Power cut are common because roads and electricity supply are always short.
Removing Mountains to Build Cities
In Laotian, Boten refers to a place where there is salt. From the port at the end of ASEAN Avenue, an adult could see the boundary pillar of China and Laos in two or three minutes of fast walk and will arrive at Boten through the huge Lao national gate shaped as a big golden tower .
Laos is originally labelled “slow life”, but Boten, only five minutes away from Mohan, shows a different picture. In July 2019, it was almost a place of densest container truck in the world, full of roar of trucks serving the construction. The buildings erected stand in rows and rows and even the main street is still busy when the night falls. Zhou Kun, president of Yunnan Haicheng Group, was appointed as the chairman of the special economic zone for overall development by the Laos government. He is certain that his efforts will transform Boten, a city used to be a place of pornography, gamble and drug, into a prosperous special economic zone like Shenzhen, China.
Bonten is the best epitome of the close tie between China and Laos. The growing trade between the two countries brings the city. According to the Ministry of Commerce of China, the volume of bilateral trade between China and Laos totaled$3.47 billion last year with a steep increase of 14.9 percent over the same period last year. Of this amount, China exported$1.45 billion to Laos, up 2.5 percent from the same period last year, and imported $2.02 billion, up 25.8 percent on year.By the end of last year, the contract value of projects signed by Chinese enterprises in Laos reached $35.49 billion and realized a turnover of $25.46 billion. China primarily imports copper, wood and agricultural products from Laos.
In spite of the expected surge of transit tourists, Zhou also intends to attract people to stay at Boten with its pleasant climate. He says that 93% forest coverage and nearly 1 million mu of virgin forest in the surrounding area, can definitely make Boten a new health resort in Southeast Asia. The favorable natural conditions are important, but it should be matched with the policy of the Special Econmic Zone. “We have the management right and approval right of the SEZ. New drugs and medical technologies will be allowed to try first in the SEZ,” Zhou says.
The special zone mannaged by Zhoukun is like a newborn baby. Promising future as it has, it still needs a life supervisor. During my visit here, I didn’t see any recycling industry and distribution, at least in the area of sustainable development.
Like Shangyong town, there are only one or two main streets in Nadui. The owner from Zhejiang opens a Chinese supermarket near the main street. He says honestly that the business is light now since the railway construction is coming to an end. When moving forward, a local village comes into view. It is surprised that the simple houses have the word “Demolition” in both Chinese and Laotian.
Driving on the way from Nadui back to Boten, surrounded by giant bulldozers, it reminds me the scene of the movie The Wandering Earth with only my car moving forward in the dust. In the vastness of green, the skyline of the tall building appears like a mirage. Will the city building cause damage to the local environment? Zhou Kun gives his answer after counting. He says that the 16-square-kilometre SEZ can turn into a new town that is home to 100,000 people. Without development driven by construction, many people would also scatter in the surrounding forests and live on cutting down trees. In his view, it is profitable to build a city on 16 square kilometers land in a effort to protect 160 or more square kilometers of the primeval forest.
Along the Mekong River
It is near evening when I arrived in Luang Prabang by an international bus with sleepers from the Boten port all the way south after eating Xiang cuisines cooked by Hunan chefs in Mengsai in the middle way. The all passengers on the international bus are almost Chinese businessmen dreaming of making money in Laos except for two young Japanese tourists. “It is difficult to do business in China owing to the strict requirements on environmental protection,” said by Pan, a businessman who works in the building industry in Jiangxi province, east China .
Pan tells the truth. Different from the vigorous movement of environmental protection in some major Chinese cities, economic development is more desired for Laotian. “many of my projects that are lower than the environmental standards have been shut down, So I come to see the market in Laos.”
The No. 84 decree issued in 2016 includes an assessment process on effects on the environment and the society in its second chapter. Investment projects, the list of activities, terms of reference and range of the study and even ESIA report in chapter II seems to be reasonable and acceptable at the first glance. However, according to the analysis of Panshama, a Laotian scholar, Laos does not have decent literature on environmental assessment, that is say it is difficult for many projects carried out to have standardized environmental and social assessments. International Rivers also says in its official website that there is few environmental and social project assessment in Laos due to the lack of media supervision.
The water level of the Mekong River is not as high as usual for the late coming of rainy season. Although the Mekong River Commission once said that there is not much connection between the low water level and building of dam in its upper stream. Before I arrived in Luang Brabang, several workers get off the bus at a Chinese-built hydropower station which is just one stop before my destination.
It was days after I arrived that I had a chance to experience the free cruise service offered by the hotel. It was a cloudy sunset, only two other young male travelers from the ROK and me on board, the sampan fishing in the traditional way and the boundless green on both banks quickly passed us. The captain crosses the boat and stops it so that we could enjoy a quiet time on the red-yellow river. Looking at the clouds in the sky and the scene around, we understand why some people call the Mekong River the river of the gods. In my hotel along the river, Song Ta, the receptionist didn’t bother to tell me how to spend good time along the river. He also said that the Mekong River’s ecology is extremely important for the river-fed Laotian over the past centuries.
The U.S.-based International Rivers describes Laos on its official website: Laos had published environmental and social assessment policies on hydropower as early as 2005, but lacked of implement. Piaporn Deetes, the program official from the Tailand office of the organization, tells us that compared with railway construction, the influence of hydropower station on Meking River’s ecological environment is given more attention.
Mekong River turns a big circle in Luang Prabang, Lao, which seperates the peninsula covered with primitive forests from the outside world for thousands of years. Huang Zhong, Chief engineer of China Railway No.8 Engeering Group, responsible for the construction of the Mekong River Bridge, clearly remembers that they indeed met several households in the deep forest, during their initial explosion of the route. When talking with them, to their surprise, they found those people even didn’t know the modern development of outside world, which made the researchers believe they must be forgotten by the Lao Population Registration Department.
Crossing no-man’s land and the Mekong River, the most difficult part of the program, according to the Huang, is lack of hydrological data, and some waste floating down frequently from the upstream. He says: “The five main piers of the bridge are all located in the deep water of the Mekong River where the water flow is turbulent. It is difficult to explode and excavate the underwater foundation and the uncovered riverbed.”
Huang Zhong, who studied the subject of Environmental Impact in college before, says that cement piers of super-large bridges only produce mud and other environmental contaminant during the construction process, but they will handle itproperly. In addition, following the rules strictly, they merely work in the designated construction area and clear the waste in time. In the Sino-Lao Railway Lines, bridges and tunnels of which account for a large proportion, has a special panel in charging for related bridge engineering departments. According to the official files, their main responsibilities are to reduce dust and noise, supervising sewage treatment and construction greening, etc.
“It has been proved that modern engineering and the nature can be harmoniously unified. In the future, people traveling to Luang Prabang by plane can view the bridge from the air. It will make Luang Prabang, a world-class tourist city, more charming.”
Railway builders such as Huang Zhong only observe changes about the flow of the Mekong River, but the Mekong River Commission believes that many environmental impact reports from the hydropower stations in Laos have always ignoredthe hazards to the general environment. They believe that the hydrological environment and soil fertility will be changed by the influence of large-scale infrastructure facilities.
For Sino-Lao Railway, besides exploiting the flourishing forest and building the railway lines in the no-man area of the peninsula, we find the greatest impact on the local area is related to the immigrants who have to move because they have to give way to the infrastructure program. After an unexpected accident of a SUV flat burst, it was almost evening when we arrived at an immigrant village called “Polo”, south of Luang Prabang. Immigration is an imperative topic for all infrastructure construction. When I talk to the people in the village, I notice they are full of worries and expectations to the program.
The roadbed has been built to the village entrance, and the one near the village head’s house clearly marks the direction of the future railway routines. There are 103 households in this village(“Lao Ting Village”), which now will move again. At the beginning of the new century, all the villagers moved from the nearby mountains to this relatively low-altitudelocation. At that time, for the purpose of building roads and national development, the officials ordered them to move. In a bamboo shed of the village, reporters ask the villagers about the relocation, people begin to talk about it. “If we have to move, we will move together. We all defer to the village head.”
More infrastructure programs appear near the village. Almost all the male labor force here leaves the village for work, while women, the elderly and children stay at home. A madam who built a house on a roadbed says, “Our male villagers can earn 3 million Kips a month (about HK$3,000) when they work outside.” If asked how much compensation fee they expect, they look at each other and could not give us exact amount of money. But then they laugh and say, “The more, the better. I want a sack of money to build a new house.”
However, some women who stay in the village can clearly tell us how much compensation they want–mostly 100 million to 200 million Kips for each household, about 80,000 to 160,000 yuan.
Unlike China’s mature demolition mechanism, Laos has never conducted large-scale land acquisition and demolition before. Although there are laws exactly stipulating compensation, but many people are unable to clear up the clue in the real cases. For the first time, Laos people who hear of trains first time even rush to move their families near the railways because they imagine that trains are a means of transportation that would stop when someone waves his hand. Undoutedly, they will suffer from noise in the future.
Villagers do not trust the government very much. Suddenly we hear someone saying in such breeze evening, “We are willing to take money for relocation, but also afraid that the efficiency of the government is slower.” We notice the speaker is a fashion young lady. Solangong, who just graduated from high school, has the “highest degree” in this village. “Our village is about to be prosperious due to the railways. I don’t have the money to go to college, but maybe I can do some business when the railways are finished to construct in the future.”
New Roads in Vientiane
I take a propeller plane from Luang Prabang Airport to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, for 40 minutes from takeoff to landing. It takes a whole day if I drive on the highways. Looking out of the cabin, you will see how primitive Laos is. All you can see of the land is green, which is also confirmed by Pan Shamai, a Laotian scholar with a master’s degree from East China Normal University. Pan writes in his master’s thesis–Research on Lao’s Ecological Problems and Environmental Protection Measures–that Lao’s national economic development starts late, so the environmental problems are not very serious.
However, she also stresses that with the economic growth and urban expansion since the 1990s, Laos has to think about how to coordinate the integration of economy and environmental protection.
We attribute the success of the first highway in Laos to the expansion of the city. At present, besides the first modern railway in Laos, the Yunnan Construction and Investment Corporation has also built the first highway starting from Vientiane( the capital) to the north. The first part of the railway under construction is 109.1 kilometers long, with a total investment of about 8.9 billion yuan, and the end point is Wanrong, a tourist resort. After completion, it will only take one hour or so to travel from Vientiane to Wanrong, which is nearly three hours shorter than now.
In the northern suburb of Vientiane, the road divides the farmland into two sides and extends to the distant place, where it belongs to the woodlands of the local people. When it comes to demolition, the owners of the forest land will certainly call on the officials, who will compensate them according to statutory standards.
In order to understand how the local people perceive the relationship between infrastructure and the environment, I wentto the villages around the construction site and the highway to visit the local people. Many people are inspiring as theylearn that the Chinese people come to build the expressway. A “Du Du Che” driver named “Pei” was one of them in Songbei Village, the northern suburb of Vientiane. He never cheats his customers. He only charges 10,000 Kips (about HK$10) for one drive, which is much cheaper than his fellow competitors among this city’s tourism. The earthy man says, “I appreciate my business, since a car here merely costs more than 1 million kips (about HK$1,000), and many Chinese road builders support my business, I can earn back a car just in 10 days.”
“If the highway is finished, I intend to drive a taxi, there should be a lot of tourists who would like to take a taxi for traveling in Wanrong.” Pei, who is business-minded, also remember to consult the toll, “30,000 to 40,000 Kip per trip (about 30 to 40 HK dollars) is acceptable.” This program is constructed by Sino-Lao joint venture, and Laos has given Chinese contractors 50 years’rights and interests in toll fees.
Highway will bring many unprecedented new things to Laos, such as toll stations and highway management agencies. Besides the freshness, the program also leaves a great impression. In his early years, Alin was awarded a national scholarship to study at Guangxi Normal University for Nationalities with the major of Environmental Engineering. He is now working as an interpreter at the expressway headquarters. “Only when he arrives in China does he see the advance of high-speed railway and expressway.” If we can finish the highway earlier, it will be very convenient for us to go from China to Laos and then to Thailand.
Alin’s hometown is in the south, and his parents have been farmers all their lives. He says he still wants to go back to his hometown to work. He feels very stressful to live in the city, and it is difficult for him to raise tens of thousands of dollars to work in government departments. At the end of our talk, he shares a wish he has buried in his heart: make more money so that his parents could live in brick houses.
Similar to Alin, Barry, 40, lives in the south of Laos, whose life suddenly changed due to a dam break last year. Now, with other 200 victims, he works in the factory for beam precasting in Vientiane of the Second Bureau of Sino-Laos Railway.
In Laos, it seems that the concept of environmental protection is generally related to abundant trees no matter for a highly-educated youth like Alin or a peasant like Bali. However, for Chinese investors in Laos, how to implement environmental policies is almost like two extremes of the spectrum: on the one hand, large enterprises are more self-disciplined on it; on the other hand, small enterprises are less concerned about it.
Zhang Jianhua, a journalist from Xinhua News Agency in Laos, once wrote that the sixth bidding section at the southernmost of the Sino-Laos Railway is located in Vientiane, the captial and the whole province, which is the political, economic, cultural and tourist center of Laos. The builders of the Second Bureau of China Railway draw lessons from the environmental protection experience of Hangzhou-Huangshan Railway in China. The roadbed of the railway makes full use of the original vegetation on both sides of the line and carries out the maximum ecological restoration. According to the regional characteristics and the human landscape, each station yard designs the special greening scheme, so as to realize the integration of greening function and surrounding scenery. However, more specific ecological measures have not been further mentioned.
Compared with large-scale infrastructure programs such as the Sino-Laos Railway Program, some private entrepreneurs have absolutely different approaches. Last year, the Wechat public number –Embrace the Indian Ocean, with nearly 1 million followers published an article criticizing the fact that a Chinese investment company used and disorderly disposed of harmful chemicals into rivers during the banana planting in Laos, resulting in the death of a large number of fish, shrimp and crabs. Currently, relevant agencies have ordered the company to take responsibility and restore the damaged environment within three years. When I travel in northern Laos, I hear of similar cases.
On the one hand, it concerns with rapid industrialization, on the other hand, environmental protection, so the Laosgovernment itself puts forward the goal of “by 2020, the forest coverage rate will reach 70%”. Vientiane has formulated measures about environmental protection based on prevention, long-term protection and restoration. In the vast green areas of Laos, dotted industrial parks appear. I think they are the cradle of “Made in Laos” and an attempt to explore the balance between environment and economy. Lin Yifu, a well-known Chinese economist, once said that if developing countries like Laos are eager to start industrialization, it is best to build industry zone with abundant soft and hard facilities.
I set the meeting with other media friends as my last activity in Laos. Maybe Laos is too insignificant in the world, therefore apart from Chinese media, none of the famous western media journalists have ever been working in Laos now.
A colleague familiar with the Laos’ media meets me in a cafe. He, with no intention to publish his name, says that the media in Laos is similar to a spectrum with two extremes: One is that the influence of state-owned media is declining; while the other is that social media is extremely active, and most young people get news and information from social media. As for the Sino-Lao Railway, which I am concerned about, this colleague says it is only criticism that is reflected in the social media, mainly focusing on environmental protection, migration and debt repayment. Social media has become a hot platform for public opinions about Sino-Lao Railways, but their feedback is always hard to turn back China.
It just takes less than 2 hours to return to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, from Wadai airport. We can feel the modernization almost in every corner of Kunming. In politics, Laos is the first country to sign the “Community of Destiny Action Plan” with China. At 10 o’clock at night, I, who rest in the room of a high-rise hotel beside Dianchi Lakehe, could sometimes hear the loud mechanical sound rolling into my ears, which makes me unable to sleep soundly. So I just subside my mind back each quite night-running time along the Mekong River. I hope that Laos under the unprecedentedly rapid development of modernization can preserve the survival rules that has existed for thousands of years: respect the god of nature and believe all creatures have souls.