In a coffee shop in central Vientiane on a hot summer day
in 2012, two young Chinese businessmen from northwestern
China, sipping ice-cold Latte, talked about the prospect of
a new venture to explore copper in the mountains of northern
Laos: ‘If we make $100 and they [Laotians] get $5, they
should be happy’. On the outskirts of Yunnan’s capital city
of Kunming, China’s fourth largest airport behind Beijing,
Shanghai, and Guangzhou (also the world’s fifth largest
airport in occupied area), Changshui International Airport,
which is expected to have flown 38 million passengers by
2020 and 65 million by 2040,1
was opened with much
fanfare in June 2012. While seemingly disparate, this pair of
anecdotes reveals the ambition of China’s ‘Go Southwest’
strategy to extend its economic interests and influence into
Southeast Asia