China’s belt and road causes tourism controversy

Tourists paddle down a river in Vang Vieng in Laos.

China’s New Silk Road praised by bank – rejected by communities

Whilst Takehiko Nakao the President of the Asian Development Bank welcomed the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), saying that it is nice to build connectivity between countries through the initiative. In Laos villagers are blocking the way to having their land surveyed.

Hailing the Belt and Road Initiative as a good idea, Nakao said "We can cooperate through BRI to support the countries that need our help. Together with other development banks like the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, we have a memorandum of understanding for cooperation with the Belt and Road Initiative,"

Proposed by China in 2013, the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative aims to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa based on ancient land and maritime trade routes.

But Lao villagers living in the scenic Vang Vieng region north of the capital Vientiane are blocking attempts to survey their land for the foreign-invested development, fearing they will be displaced from their homes by a new Chinese tourism project, sources in the Southeast Asian country say.

The project, managed by the Chinese firm Lao-Vang Vieng New Area Development Company, will affect 22 villages lying to the west of the Xong river and has been given permission from the Lao government to proceed.

But attempts by company employees to survey the area were blocked at the end of December when villagers objected to the plans, the head of one village told RFA’s Lao Service this week.

"The company tried to survey the villagers’ homes and land, but the villagers objected, and there were verbal confrontations," the village leader said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"The confrontation ended only when district authorities came by to calm things down," he added.

"Most of the villagers here don’t want the Chinese company to survey their land, because they are afraid that their homes and property will be taken from them, and if this happens, where will they go to live?"

It is believed that the proposed special economic zone (SEZ) called the Sustainable Tourism Development Project will cover thousands of hectares of land in Vang Vieng, an area of natural beauty already popular with backpackers and river-goers, but officials have not yet published the exact number, the source said.

"They [the Chinese company] are basically exploring the possibilities now for what can be done," a tourism official for Vang Vieng told RFA, also speaking on condition he not be named.

Signed by the Lao-Vang Vieng Company last year in a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Laos, the project will run in three phases over 15 years at a cost of U.S. $5.5 billion, and is expected to create 50,000 jobs, according to Lao media sources.

It is unclear how many of those jobs will go to Lao villagers now living in the area, however.

Meanwhile, Vientiane province has granted another Chinese company permission to survey the area of a former airport in Vang Vieng for construction of an entertainment complex, including a shopping mall, hotels, and other structures on 15 hectares of land at a cost of U.S. $200 million, sources say.

As one of the least developed Southeast Asian nations, Laos has become a target for massive foreign investment, especially from companies from neighbors China, Thailand, and Vietnam, which receive attractive investment incentives from the Lao government.

Laos grants its citizens the right to occupy land, and some can sell the right to use their land if their family has inhabited it for generations.

But citizens cannot officially own property, and the government reserves the right to reclaim land when this is deemed to be in the public interest, such as for national development projects.

At least a dozen active special and specific economic zones have already been created throughout the country to attract foreign direct investment to boost development and job opportunities in rural areas since 2002 when the first SEZ was set up.

Under Lao Decree 84 issued in April 2016, Lao citizens who lose land to development projects must be compensated for lost income, property, crops, and plants.

Project owners must also guarantee that living conditions for those displaced will be as good as, or better than, they were before the project was launched.

However, compensation payments are often delayed, sometimes for long periods of time, or are paid out in amounts lower than those initially promised, with newly assigned land sometimes deemed unsuitable for farming, sources say.

Source:  Ounkeo Souksavanh for RFA’s Lao Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.

The ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ is a massive trillion dollar Chinese initiative involving transportation, infrastructure, development and tourism. 65 countries are committed to the project.

Read more about China weaponizing tourism along the Silk Road in Sustainable Tourism02 www.sustainabletourismreport.com

Valere Tjolle