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Obama Becomes First Sitting President to Visit Laos

VIENTIANE, Laos — This capital city, with its wide, tree-lined French colonial boulevards and old-fashioned tuk-tuk three-wheeled taxis, takes its turn in the international spotlight Monday, as Barack Obama becomes the first sitting U.S. president to travel here.

The sleepy, landlocked country of 6.8 million may well be the final Asian stop during his presidency. Obama arrives from the Group of 20 summit in Hangzhou, China, for a series of Asian summit meetings during the week.

Obama plans to push for closer economic ties with Laos and Southeast Asia, and other issues of international concern.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, before he flew to Laos on Monday for the summit, warned Obama not to question him about extrajudicial killings — more than 2,000 suspected drug dealers and users have been killed since Duterte launched a war on drugs after taking office two months ago.

Duterte said Obama must not throw questions at him, or else, “son of a bitch, I will swear at you in that forum,” the Associated Press reported.

“Clearly he’s a colorful guy,” Obama said at a news conference in China when asked about Duterte’s comment.

Obama said he asked his staff to determine if meeting with Duterte while in Laos would still be productive.

The main topic for discussion with Laos’ leaders is sure to be unexploded ordnance, the legacy of a massive U.S. aerial campaign during the Vietnam War that dropped 270 million cluster bombs on the then officially neutral country to support the governing royal family against a Communist insurgency.

The White House said unexploded ordnance will be a focus of Obama’s visit, and it has signaled a stronger financial commitment to help clear deadly bombs that litter large swaths of the countryside.

Activists dealing with the problem see the president’s visit as an opportunity to bring it to the world’s attention. “We’re hoping for a strong multi-year commitment to clearance and victim assistance,” said Titus Peachey, board chairman of Legacies of War, an educational and advocacy group on the impact of Vietnam-era conflict.

Between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. conducted 580,000 bombing missions over Laos, partly as an effort to cut supply lines along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a North Vietnamese supply chain that ran to South Vietnam.

An estimated 80 million of the baseball-sized cluster bombs —nearly a third of those dropped — failed to detonate. Less than 1% have been cleared and more than 20,000 people have been killed or injured since the bombing ceased.

Peachey said his organization is hoping for a $25 million annual commitment from the U.S. for 10 years. “We think that would be the amount needed to really make a significant impact on the clearance task,” he said. “We think there needs to be additional funding for victim assistance. There are about 12,000 to 15,000 surviving victims of cluster bombs and other ordnance accidents living in Laos and many of them need lifelong services.”

During the Obama administration, the U.S. has dramatically increased funding for bomb clearance, from about $2.5 million a decade ago to $19.5 for 2017. Thanks to the increased funds and new survey methods to uncover ordnance, the number of annual casualties has dropped significantly, from 310 in 2008 to just 42 in 2015.

For Obama, the visit is also a chance to strengthen economic ties with the formerly estranged country. “Given this president’s commitment to reach out to countries with whom we’ve had complicated histories, we see this as a real opportunity to…build a real working partnership that can benefit both of our peoples,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said ahead of the trip.

Laos also can play a strategic role in the region as a member of ASEAN, the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, to help counter an increasingly assertive China in the region.

The visit “offers an opportunity for the U.S. leader to advance the so-called U.S. pivot to Asia” — Obama’s call for less emphasis on Europe, said Curtis S. Chin, former U.S. Ambassador to the Asian Development Bank and Asia Fellow at the Milken Institute, an economic think tank based in California.

“It is clear that a Chinese presence will continue to be felt in Laos and across Southeast Asia,” he said. “It is critical that U.S. engagement also continue in the region if a rules-based international order and U.S. economic leadership are to be sustained.”

China is already a major investor in Laos, with several large-scale projects in the works that range from special economic development zones at border areas to a $7 billion railway that is scheduled to link Vientiane with Kunming in southwestern China by 2020.

Source: USA Today

Railways May Build the New ASEAN Community

BANGKOK – The leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will gather in the Laotian capital Vientiane from September 6-8 for their first summit meeting since the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) came into being at the beginning of this year. However, one item which is crucial to such community building, the construction of new rail lines linking most of the 10 member nations may not be a major agenda item.

A report by the Lao News Agency (LNA) ahead of the meeting drew attention to this fact, when the ongoing Laos-China railway construction project was described as a game-changer in community-building in the region. The project, a 427 km railway built by China, will have 72 tunnels and 170 bridges and stretch from the Laos-China border in Phongsaly to the Lao capital Vientiane near the Thai border.

A recent report by the Laotian Ministry of Pubic Works and Transport suggests that the project will ensure that the Laos would have strong economic infrastructure that meets its vision of transforming from a landlocked to a land-linked country and help achieve the external cooperation and connectivity strategies the government has envisioned with other ASEAN member countries.

In an interview with LNA on the eve of the summit, Yao Bin, the chairman of Krittaphong Group, one of Laos’s biggest construction companies, argued that the rail project will help to turn Laos into an attractive logistic centre and will encourage neighbouring countries to cooperate with Laos in developing better logistics systems in the region.

“Today one of the most important aspects of a country is its transportation facilities. If a country becomes a transport hub, then it will become a trade centre and finally a financial centre bringing with it prosperity for the people,” said Yao.

The rail systems in the region were first built by French and British colonial rulers, often to transport produce from the plantations they established in the interior or mineral resources from mines to the ports for shipment to Europe. These colonial trade systems have existed until very recently in the region where countries looked at export-led growth with its markets mainly in the rich European and North American continents.

But, China’s rapid economic rise in the past two decades has changed such thinking and countries in the region are now looking at markets in the neighbourhood where the middle classes are rising and so are their purchasing power.

China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ project, which some have dubbed the ‘New Silk Route’, is tapping into this potential – and creating rail linkages are a major component of this project. The thinking behind this strategy is different to the European colonial strategy, because the railways are built to link communities, where both goods and people will be transported. In the latter case, it will increase regional tourism and people-to-people links, thus helping to build an ASEAN/Asian community.

An agreement signed in October 2006 by 19 Asian and Eurasian countries to build a Trans-Asian Railway network will create a rail network that links China right across Southeast Asia to Singapore. The missing links are now being built, mainly with Chinese rail technology and financing.

As Yao pointed out, goods now transported from coastal ports of Thailand to Chinese ports take at least one month to reach their destination. But, once the Laos-China link is completed, goods from Thailand could go through Laos to China’s Yunan province and into any Chinese city and vice-versa within a day. Millions of Chinese tourists who come to Thailand every year could also take this route and Laos could benefit as a transit point.

After a few hiccups, a Thai-Chinese high-speed rail project to improve rail connections between Bangkok and the Lao border near Vientiane has finally got under way with construction due to begin before the end of the year of a dual-track 870-km transport link. Under an agreement that was finally signed between the governments of Thailand and China, the latter will buy Thai rubber and rice in increased quantities and help build the broad-gauge railway with Chinese technology.

With both China and Japan expected to play a role in building and improving rail networks in Malaysia, a high-speed rail network is expected to be established between Chinese cities across Laos, Thailand and Malaysia to Singapore within the next few years. The first phase of China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ dream will thus become a reality.

While China holds 70 percent and Laos 30 percent in the US$ 7 billion rail project in Laos, the Thai government decided to be the sole investor of the US$ 10.6 billion project and hire China to develop the project, after failing to negotiate a low interest loan from China. However, China has promised to buy two million tons of rice and 200,000 tons of rubber a year – that would represent a doubling of Chinese imports of those Thai commodities.

“Only China has such a big market and a huge purchasing power which could consume the big agricultural production of rice, rubber and others of Thailand,” said China’s Premier Li Keqiang after the two countries signed the Memorandum of Understanding almost two years ago.

However, while the rail projects have a strong community-building potential, there are also some sore points that needs to be ironed out as the projects roll on. Compensation for people that need to be moved out for these rail lines to be built is threatening to become an issue in Laos, and so are Chinese companies’ plans to develop commercial projects on acquired land adjoining the route.

Meanwhile, China is seen as a front runner for the lucrative contract expected to be given next year to build a high-speed train link between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, after beating the Japanese to a similar project in Indonesia in March this year to build a high-speed rail between Jakarta and Bandung.

China is a relative newcomer to the arena of building high-speed trains. Japan, Germany and France have been the traditional powerhouses and China has first studied their technology and in the past 13 years built the world’s biggest high-speed rail system.

As Malaysian transport planning consultant Goh Bok Yen notes, “they picked up from the middle road, they picked up new technology, did their own research and development (R&D) and modernised the technology acquired.”

In fact, China can now boast the fastest high-speed railway development in the world. Its nine bullet rail systems covered a total rail line distance of 19,000 km in 2015, accounting for 60 percent of the world’s total line distance.

“Due to China’s R&D on major train projects and super lengthy tracks, China has developed the most cost-effective rail system in the world that nobody can compete with,” says Goh.

While the international media are preoccupied with real or imagined conflicts in the South China Sea, China and its neighbours are developing rail networks that could make the South China Sea irrelevant in developing transport and trading links in the region.

These railway projects are not only building community links in the region, but also bringing governments closer together. Relations between China and its ASEAN neighbours Laos, Thailand and Malaysia have never been better than they are today.

Source: International Press Syndicate

Phu Bia Mining Supports ASEAN Business and Investment Summit

Phu Bia Mining on Sep 1 donated US$5,000 to support the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit which will be held in Vientiane from Sep 5-7.

President Xi Proposes Community of Common Destiny with Laos

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday called on China and Laos to build an unshakable community of common destiny.

JORDAN TO HOST AFC WOMEN’S ASIAN CUP 2018 FINALS

Chonburi: The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Women’s Football Committee met on Sunday in Chonburi, Thailand, coinciding with the qualifying round for the AFC U-16 Women’s Championship 2017 taking place in the country.

Key decisions were made relating to the host nations of upcoming AFC women’s competitions: Jordan were chosen to host the AFC Women’s Asian Cup 2018 finals; the AFC U-19 Women’s Championship 2017 finals were awarded to China PR (Nanjing) and Thailand (Bangkok) were announced as the hosts of the AFC U-16 Women’s Championship 2017 finals.

The decision to award the hosting of the AFC Women’s Asian Cup 2018 Finals to Jordan was reached following the study of bidding files and the report of the inspection visit to Amman in April. The inspection team assessed the venues on a number of themes including hosting of previous AFC competitions, current state of facilities, general infrastructure, transport, security and accommodation.

AFC Women’s Football Committee Chairwoman Moya Dodd said: “Jordan have proved they are worthy hosts of the next edition of the AFC Women’s Asia Cup Finals and I would like to congratulate the Jordan Football Association on submitting such a professional and thorough bid. This decision marks a geographical landmark, being the first time a Member Association from the West Zone will have hosted a senior AFC women’s tournament. We look forward to seeing them in the spotlight and wish them well later this month, too, as they host the FIFA Women’s U-17 World Cup.”

Dodd reflected on a busy meeting agenda, adding: “This is an exciting time for women’s football in Asia as the AFC has pledged recently, as part of its Vision and Mission statement, to further invest in the women’s game in the continent and build on recent progress and success. The information shared and discussed today highlights the great steps that are being made in terms of development, coaching, technical ability and competitiveness, as well as administrative expertise at all levels of the women’s game in Asia.”

The Committee also discussed the potential for a pilot Asian club championship for elite teams, as well as possible development tournaments for emerging Member Associations, further mirroring the AFC’s commitment to providing top level competitions to raise the standard of competition in Asia.

Source: laoff.org.la

Urban Youth Dance 2016 to Promote Youth Performance

Urban Youth Dance 2016 (UYD 2016) will be held at the National Culture Hall on Sep 9-10, 2016 with the sponsorship of Coca Cola Laos and Unilever Laos, among others.

President Bounnhang Vorachit Interviews Chinese journalists

On Sep 1 at the Presidential Palace  in Vientiane Capital, President Bounnhang Vorachit gave an interview to members of the Chinese media comprised of journalists from China Radio International (CRI), Xinhua, China Central Television (CCTV) and People’s Daily. 

Chinese Prime Minister to Visit LAOS

Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang will pay an official visit to Laos to attend the 28th and 29th ASEAN Summits and related meetings in Vientiane Capital.