Word: mekong
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...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...