Photograph for TIME by Samuel Bollendorff / Oeil Public Cambodian fisherman Bun Neang says the Mekong-fed Tonle Sap lake is yielding ever smaller catches—and blames China for it (Photograph for TIME by Samuel Bollendorff / Oeil Public)
Thursday, Aug. 30, 2007By Hannah Beech
Time Magazine (USA)The nets yield almost no fish today, the same as yesterday and the day before that. For generations, Bun Neang's family has depended on the bounty of Cambodia's Tonle Sap, a vast lake fed by one of the world's greatest rivers, the Mekong. Two decades ago, his father could rely on a daily catch totaling about 65 lbs. (30 kg). When the water gods were feeling particularly charitable, he would land a Mekong catfish, a massive bottom-feeder that can weigh as much as a tiger. But today, when Bun Neang dips his net into the caramel-hued waters near Chong Koh village, all the 30-year-old can hope for is a few kilos of sardine-sized fish. Overfishing is partly to blame. But Bun Neang knows of another reason Tonle Sap's big game have all but disappeared. "China," he says of the country that is now tiny Cambodia's biggest foreign investor and economic patron. "Instead of sharing the Mekong, they dam the river and keep it for themselves."
For millenniums, China hardly touched the mighty Mekong, content to let its raging headwaters flow unimpeded from the Tibetan plateau down through Laos, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. But over the past few years, the emergent superpower has begun turning the world's 12th-longest river into a highway for regional commerce and a source of hydroelectric power. For many Indochinese entrepreneurs, increased China trade and investment has allowed a backward region to participate in their upstream neighbor's remarkable economic expansion. Southeast Asian governments hope China will share the electricity it will harness after a series of massive dams on the upper Mekong are completed in the nation's western Yunnan province. Two have already been built. At least six more are planned.
But for tens of millions of residents downstream, China's efforts to manage the Mekong also threaten their way of life. An astounding 17% of all fish caught in inland waters worldwide come from this generous river, while 90% of the basin's residents are subsistence farmers who largely depend on the Mekong's nutrient-rich waters to feed their fields. Yet Chinese dams, along with engineering projects to make the river navigable by larger vessels, have begun to ravage the river's ecology by blocking sediment and producing unnatural water flows that dissuade fish migration and spawning. The nonprofit Southeast Asian Rivers Network estimates that fish stocks on the Thai-Laos border have already declined by half because of Chinese activity. Farmers, too, complain that the once-predictable floods needed to nourish their paddies have been disrupted by the two existing Chinese dams — and the cavalcade of future hydropower projects will only make things worse. "You can't talk about the Mekong today without talking about China," says Carl Middleton, a Bangkok-based consultant for environmental watchdog International Rivers Network. "So much that's happening on the river, whether it's economic, social or environmental, can be linked to China's rise."
Snaking its way from the icy reaches of Tibet to tropical rice paddies near the South China Sea, the Mekong serves as the lifeblood for 70 million people in six different countries. The river's wetlands alone cover an area the size of Ireland, while its fish diversity is rivaled only by the Amazon. But even as many of the world's other majestic rivers — the Nile, the Yangtze, the Mississippi — were efficiently exploited for trade or hydropower, the 3,000-mile (4,800-km) Mekong has until recently largely escaped the imprint of the modern world. During the colonial era, treacherous rapids stymied expeditions hoping to uncover its upstream secrets, leaving the waterway for local fishermen and farmers. By the mid-1900s, when the West was forced to withdraw from Indochina, the Mekong had become a byword for the failure of modern military might against dogged resistance forces nourished by the river's gifts.
The Mekong is not so unyielding these days. In 2001, Chinese crews, brought in by Southeast Asian governments eager to increase traffic and trade, began blasting and dredging a stretch of the river running from Burma and Laos to Thailand, clearing away islands, reefs and rapids that once blocked the passage of ships. Since then, sleepy Southeast Asian river ports have morphed into boomtowns, with boats from China disgorging cheap electronics, fruits, vegetables and every kind of plastic gadget imaginable. River traffic runs both ways: in December 2006, the first shipment of refined oil chugged up the Mekong bound for energy-hungry China, opening up a potential alternative shipping route to avoid the pirate-infested Straits of Malacca through which roughly half of its imported oil now passes. And with China needing somewhere to park its ballooning foreign-exchange reserves, the riverfront capitals of Phnom Penh and Vientiane now gleam with Chinese-built roads, buildings and other infrastructure. The torrent of investment will likely grow even greater next year when Chinese construction workers finish building a 1,100-mile (1,800-km) Yunnan-Bangkok highway that parallels a section of the Mekong. "Chinese are natural businessmen," says Liu Jingchun, a Chinese boat captain who transports goods between Yunnan and northern Thailand. "For so many years, we shut ourselves off from doing business. Now that we're allowed to trade again, it's like a giant floodgate has opened."
Few places on the Mekong have changed so dramatically as has the northern Thai river port of Chiang Saen. Located near the Golden Triangle, the point on the Mekong where Burma, Laos and Thailand meet, Chiang Saen was for centuries a drowsy temple town. But when Chinese engineers opened up the river by blasting nearby reefs, trade exploded. Laborers from all three Golden Triangle nations converged on the docks looking for work. A few years ago, only boats carrying less than 100 tons of goods could navigate this stretch of the Mekong — hardly worth the trip. Now, ships can handle triple that amount — and when other reefs are removed in the coming months, they will be able to transport even more. The knock-on effects of the China trade are big, too. A giant casino opened last year to cater to the Chinese tourists pouring from Mekong ferries into northern Thailand, and Sichuan restaurants crowd the Chiang Saen riverside. At local institutes, Mandarin classes have become as popular as English ones. "If you want to be successful in business here, you need to learn Mandarin," says Sittichai, a school director. So frenzied is the China trade that the Chiang Saen government is building a $63 million container port that's set to open in a few years' time, replacing the current port, which is itself only three years old. "Because of China, we have been able to breathe life back into Chiang Saen," says Ratchaphol Ornnim, the local chief customs inspector.
More than 250 miles (400 km) downriver, China Inc. is also reshaping Laos' riverside capital, Vientiane. The landlocked nation has been shunned by many international investors as one of the world's last remaining hard-line socialist regimes. But what others consider a pariah state, China sees as an ideological soul mate and business partner. The biggest thoroughfare in Vientiane, as well as the capital's main park and the National Cultural Hall, were all built with money given to the city by the Beijing government. More than 3,000 Chinese laborers are also busy constructing a national stadium, the centerpiece of Laos' debut as host of the 2009 Southeast Asian Games. "Laos is profiting from China's own development path," says Sun Lei, the president of the Lao-China Business Association and owner of the Mekong Hotel in downtown Vientiane. "Without China's help and advice, Laos would be much more backward."
Private Chinese cash is flowing in as well. More than 20,000 Chinese now work in Laos, up from a few hundred a decade ago. Some are farmers who were lured by land so cheap they can grow rubber, corn and fruit and sell their crops back home at a profit. Others have grander ambitions. Lin Bo graduated this spring with an accounting degree from the Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics in Eastern China, and he has come to make his fortune along the Mekong. "Many students at my university had never even heard of Laos," says the 24-year-old, who with his family has rented a space to sell mainland products at China Business and Goods City, an $18 million wholesale market and shopping complex that just opened in Vientiane. "But for traders, it doesn't matter where you go. Everywhere in the world, people need to buy and sell things."
Not all Southeast Asians are quite as sanguine about the flourishing trade. Memories of imperial domination still haunt Vietnam, which was colonized by China and repelled invading Chinese troops as recently as 1979. In Cambodia, many still remember the People's Republic's patronage of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, which oversaw the deaths of an estimated one-quarter of the population. And even in countries with less complicated historical ties to China, suspicions of an economic overpowering endure. Farmers in northern Thailand complain that they cannot compete with the influx of cheap Chinese-grown garlic, apples and onions. Even Thai customs official Ratchaphol expresses reservations about the future container port he is helping oversee. "We don't get many of the benefits," he says. "Most of our own people are not very educated, so the Chinese just bring in their own employees."
Such concerns are mystifying for the dirt-streaked farmers who are loading their produce onto ships in Guanlei, the Yunnan port from which most Chinese goods set sail down the Mekong. "I've heard it's hard to grow crops in the countries downriver," says Wu Zhencha, who has arrived in Guanlei with boxes of broccoli destined for Thailand and who is unaware that the Mekong basin is, in fact, one of the most fertile regions on earth. Because of the trade with Indochina, Wu's village now boasts a paved road linking it to the highway. Modern pleasures like electricity and television have followed. "I live a day's journey from the river," says Wu, "but my life still depends on it."
Deep in the verdant mountains of Yunnan province, an army of 10,000 workers, some wearing prison-labor uniforms, are toiling on a construction site of enormous proportions. In 2010, this remote section of the Mekong will be transformed into a placid reservoir, drowning the jagged gorges that now cradle the river. Constructed by the Huaneng Group, China's biggest power producer, Xiaowan dam is the nation's second-largest power project after the Three Gorges. As the biggest of the eight dams China plans for its portion of the Mekong, Xiaowan will dwarf the two hydropower projects that have already been built in Yunnan. Given that half the Mekong basin's water comes directly from China during the dry season, scientists worry that Xiaowan will act as a spigot that controls the destiny of millions of people in five countries. Environmental groups estimate that 35% of the silt that's needed to fertilize floodplains down south may be obstructed by the dam — distressing news for a region that depends on the Mekong for 80% of its protein needs and, in the lower river basin, rice production.
Yet many Chinese can't quite fathom the Mekong's importance to other countries. "This is our part of the river, so we should be able to do what we want with it," says Hu Tao, a geological engineer who has worked at Xiaowan for two years. "The other countries can do what they want with their sections of the river." In some ways, Hu's indifference is understandable. Roughly half the Mekong lies in China, but for most of that length its waters are too swift to support barge traffic or wide-scale fishing. (The Chinese name for the river, Lancang, means "turbulent.") The only real benefit humans can coax out of this stretch of water is hydroelectric power — and until recently the river's remoteness discouraged even that. "In China, the Mekong is not the same river as it is down in the basin," notes Eric Baran, a research scientist based in Phnom Penh for the nonprofit World Fish Center. "Here in Cambodia, it is a matter of life and death. In China, it is just another river — and not even a very major one."
But with China's energy needs soaring even in underdeveloped provinces like Yunnan, the Mekong is potent enough to be exploited for electricity. Some of that power, ironically, will be exported to countries like Thailand, where hydroelectric projects are controversial and have been blocked by ecologically minded citizens. Huaneng doesn't have to worry about public interference. The state-owned company is run by the well-connected son of China's former Premier, Li Peng. And with no shareholders calling for environmental-impact surveys or feasibility studies, Huaneng rarely makes public details of its plans until just months before it breaks ground. (The company declined requests for an interview.)
Nor does the Chinese government feel the need to consult its southern neighbors. Beijing has refused to join the Mekong River Commission, which was formed 12 years ago by four other riparian nations. (Burma is also not a member.) "I think China doesn't want to join the commission because then there will be environmental expectations," says the International River Network's Middleton. "But when the biggest country at the source of the river isn't part of the commission, it makes the group basically toothless."
That sense of helplessness extends to many in Yunnan as well. The Xiaowan project has forced 35,000 people from their homes, often with minimal compensation. Wang Zhengjun was uprooted in 2004 from his farmland on the banks of the Mekong with only six months' notice. Although he was provided a new house by Huaneng, the 42-year-old says it's much smaller than his old one — and it doesn't come with the fertile soil that supported his family for generations. Villagers were told the dam would be a financial boon to local residents. But Wang and others contend that the best jobs have gone to migrant laborers. Locals, many of whom are members of China's disenfranchised ethnic minorities, tend to earn less than half of what even the lowest paid outside workers get. "They promised us jobs, money, everything," says Wang, sitting in the ramshackle village overlooking the dam-construction site that is now his home. "But they have delivered us nothing."
China's dam building isn't limited to its sovereign stretch of the river. In June, the Laotian government gave initial approval for a $1.7 billion dam on the Mekong that will be built by two Chinese power companies. Another Chinese firm is conducting a feasibility study for a Mekong power project in Cambodia, in an area where other foreign companies have been reluctant to invest because of the adverse ecological impact. Several other Mekong tributary dams in Southeast Asia will be financed by China Exim Bank, the nation's largest credit agency, which has invested in power projects with the enthusiasm of the Great Depression-era U.S. government.
These dams may boost economic growth in developing countries facing severe energy crunches. Vietnam, for example, suffers from chronic electricity shortages, and compared with coal-fired and oil-burning plants, hydropower is a relatively clean and inexpensive solution. But dams also have severe, long-term environmental consequences. Vietnam's Mekong Delta, where the river finally meets the sea, is a vast web of waterways that serves as a giant rice bowl, providing the nation with half of its total agricultural output. Yet in part because of the increasing number of dams reducing the flow of the river, salt water from the South China Sea has begun traveling up the Mekong. The influx of brackish water over the past few years has ravaged farms and fisheries. This spring in the delta's Mo Cay district, Nguyen Thi Hong and her husband watched helplessly as salt water infiltrated their fish farms and fields. During the worst 10-day stretch, 100 catfish died a day, while their entire aquatic-vegetable crop withered. "Our pigs and cows are still sick from drinking the salty water," says Hong, who lives about 30 miles (50 km) inland. "Nothing was spared."
Even as one way of life begins to fade, another springs into existence. For so long, the Mekong Delta, despite its riverine abundance, has been scarred by a grueling cycle of war and poverty. Today, the area is welcoming Chinese investors, who have flocked to newly constructed industrial zones where Vietnamese factory workers churn out motorcycles, shoes and televisions. This year, a $1 billion industrial park funded by some 40 Chinese businesses is set to open near the South China Sea, providing jobs for tens of thousands of Vietnamese. Like the rest of the country, the delta has a booming young population that is profiting from Vietnam's economic reforms. For this striving generation, their homeland's historic enmity with China is all ancient stuff. Do Quang Tranh speaks of how magnificent imported Chinese products are, describing in wonderment the "beauty of Chinese-made bricks." If he had his wish, this farmer would trade his fields for a job in a Chinese-invested factory — even though his village's elderly commune chief warns against "that frightening country up north." The ebb and flow of the Mekong has both blessed and cursed the people of the Delta. For Tranh and other Vietnamese, they can only hope to profit from what the river now brings to Vietnam's shores: the energy of China's economic expansion, and the lure of a better life.
