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Former Laotian opium smuggling route completes north-south economic corridor

Seen from the road, the Mekong River winds its way through the foothills of the Himalayas north of Cizhong village in China's Yunnan Province on March 21. Yesterday, regional leaders inaugurated the final link of a 1,150km network of roads linking the southern Chinese city of Kunming to Bangkok, Thailand. PHOTO: AFP

The newly refurbished Route 3 that cuts through this remote town is an ordinary strip of pavement, the type of two-lane road you might find winding through the backwoods of Vermont or sunflower fields in the French provinces.

But On Leusa, 70, who lives near the road, calls it "deluxe."

As a young woman she traded opium and tiger bones along the road, then nothing more than a horse trail.

Yesterday, the prime ministers of Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam inaugurated the former opium smuggling route as the final link of what they call the "north-south economic corridor," a 1,150km network of roads linking the southern Chinese city of Kunming to Bangkok.

The network, several sections of which were still unpaved as late as December, is a major milestone for China and its southern neighbors. The low-lying mountains here, the foothills of the Himalayas, served for centuries as a natural defensive boundary between Southeast Asian civilizations and the giant empire to the north. The road rarely follows a straight line as it meanders through terraced rice fields and tea plantations.

Today, those same Southeast Asian civilizations alternately crave closer integration with that empire and fear its sway as an emerging economic giant. China, in turn, covets the land, markets and natural resources of one of Asia's least developed and most pristine regions.

With trade across these borders increasing by double digits every year, China has helped construct a series of roads inside the territory of its southern neighbors. The Chinese government is paying half the cost of a bridge over the Mekong River between Laos and Thailand, due for completion in 2011.

It financed parts of Route 3 in Laos and refurbished roads in northern Myanmar, including the storied Burma Road used by the Allies in World War II to supply troops fighting the Japanese. China is also building an oil and gas pipeline from the Bay of Bengal through Myanmar to Kunming.

Taken together, these roads are breaking the isolation of the thinly inhabited upper reaches of Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, areas that in recent decades languished because of wars, ethnic rivalries and heroin trafficking. The roads run through the heart of the Golden Triangle, the region that once produced 70 percent of the world's opium crop.

The new roads, as well as upgraded ports along the Mekong River, are changing the diets and spending habits of people on both sides of the border. China is selling fruit and green vegetables that favor temperate climates to its southern neighbors, and is buying tropical fruit, rubber, sugar cane, palm oil and seafood.

"You never used to see apples in the traditional markets," said Ruth Banomyong, an expert in logistics who teaches at Thammasat University in Bangkok.

Overall, even before the completion of the road, trade between China and the upland Southeast Asian countries Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam had risen impressively, to US$53 billion last year from slightly more than US$1 billion a decade ago.
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