China's Rise in Mainland ASEAN. Группа авторов
of the Mekong Committee was driven by economic and political opportunities. In terms of economic opportunities, the Lower Mekong basin countries gained socio-economic benefit through the Mekong Water Resources Development Project. At that time, the Lower Mekong Basin was underdeveloped, with most people earning less than US$100 a year, and there was low technology because of a shortage of budget for development. Funds have been distributed through various development projects, reaching the area and increasing the ability of the Mekong River to utilize water resources more effectively. The United States has expected the Mekong Water Resources Development Project to increase agricultural productivity, especially in rice (Somsawas, 1979, p. 163). In terms of political opportunities, after the end of the First Vietnam War in 1954, US policymakers planned to eliminate the spread of Communism (John, 2005, pp. 14–15). The United States viewed Communism as a hindrance to the development of its long-term global capitalist plans, but this precarious situation was also an opportunity for the United States to join hands with countries that had perhaps previously been unfriendly both politically and economically. Thus, this move could be regarded as a step to peacefully solving the problems in Indochina.
On April 5, 1995, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand, and Vietnam, after the preliminary work of the Mekong Committee, signed an agreement for Cooperation for Sustainable Development of the Mekong River Basin (The Mekong Agreement), in Chiang Rai, Thailand. The agreement, which was established as the Mekong River Commission (MRC), revised the cooperative structure and framework to update and increase its effectiveness. The management responsibility of the Commission fell under the responsibility of its four Member Countries, receiving support funding from the US, Japan, Australia, and the developed countries of Europe.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the US continues to strive to improve relationships within the Mekong sub-region and gain further influence through their cooperation under the Lower Mekong Initiative (LMI). This cooperative framework was created in response to the July 23, 2009, meeting in Phuket, Thailand, between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Foreign Ministers of the Lower Mekong Countries, including Thailand, Cambodia, Lao PDR, and Vietnam. The Ministers agreed to improve cooperation in the areas of environment, health, education, and infrastructure development. Since then, the five countries have sought to strengthen cooperation in these areas and build on their common interests. Myanmar formally joined the initiative in July 2012. The work of the LMI is organized into the following six broad “pillars”:
(1)agriculture and food security,
(2)“connectivity” of infrastructure,
(3)institutions and communities,
(4)education and health,
(5)energy security, and
(6)environment and water.
Since 2009, when the LMI was launched, the US has provided over US$100 million for the LMI programs. Bilateral US assistance to the LMI members across all the sectors totaled over US$285 million in fiscal year 2015. The LMI’s aim is not only promoting equitable, sustainable, and inclusive economic growth but also serving the larger and broader US goal to encourage regional cohesion, thereby slowing down the 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