Hi Elmat, Maestro Greensputin's cheap money is financing a world of developments and a planet full of initiatives.
Here is a headsup on expat workers, residential rights trading, and such ... at USD 500 per head (a bit less than 1 ounce of that noble metal we call Gold), increasing population in Laos by 0.2%, to work diligently, and presumably prosper.
China not only has a 300-year pent-up demand for infrastructure, but may in fact harbour a 300-year bottled-up demand to do a lot of Chinatown construction :0)
The integration process will give a hint of whether the world is saved, or not, but in either case, I would guess that some culture will be introduced into the Laoatian cooking regime, for a change, along with highways, river ports, factories, farms, tax revenue, sharing, schools, equality, hospitals, mutual respect, logistic hubs, currency harmonization, ... all bootstrapped on a USD 500/head tourism package.
Fascinating.
Bravely, bravely forward, for TeoTwawKi beckons and TwoAPuc winks, even as NToeAwsB gives the come hither look :0)
stratfor.biz
China: Labor Exports, Commodity Imports and Asian Colonies
May 25, 2004
Summary
China is establishing small colonies across Asia in an effort to meet its food and energy security goals and to project power to neighboring states.
Analysis
China's Chongqing Municipal Government has struck a deal with Vientiane to cooperatively build a 500-square-kilometer agricultural center in Laos for 10,000 Chinese farmers to produce grain. The announcement of the Laotian deal follows a similar plan for 3,000 Chinese laborers to move to Kazakhstan to work 700 square kilometers to grow soybeans and wheat and breed animals. These ventures help China supplement its declining grain production and find jobs for a few thousand peasants, and to improve China's strategic footing in neighboring countries.
Chongqing's nearly $5 million contract to rent land from the government of Laos reportedly was inked in March, but the details were not released by Chinese media until May 24. The project includes seven agricultural programs involving crop cultivation, fishing and processing agricultural products. Chongqing officials say the project will be completed by 2006, with estimated annual sales of $7.7 million and a profit of $655,000. Under a deal with Kazakhstan, Yili Prefecture in China's northwestern Xinjiang Autonomous Region will rent land in Ala-Kol County for 10 years, beginning in spring 2004.
The Kazakh and Laotian ventures are not China's first attempt at foreign agricultural production. In 1996, the state-owned Suntime Group, based in Xinjiang, invested $50,000 in Cuba to develop a 150-hectare rice plantation. Two years later, Suntime invested $3.2 million to purchase 1,050 hectares from the Mexican government to grow rice. There also are numerous Chinese farming ventures in the Russian Far East that are largely worked by illegal Chinese immigrants.
China has one of the highest proportions of workers to arable land -- about three people per hectare -- leaving the country saddled with about 150 million surplus rural laborers, according to official statistics. The Middle Kingdom's relatively densely populated rural areas are a sharp contrast with the relatively desolate lands of Kazakhstan and the Russian Far East. The agricultural colonies, to a limited extent, can help alleviate a bit of the stress caused by overcrowding in the Chinese countryside -- especially if the trend continues and more ventures, illegal or not, are on the way.
The Chinese settlements also help improve the country's grain production, which has been limited by the loss of about 14 million hectares of arable land to development and desertification during the same time period. Harvests dropped from 392 million metric tons in 1998 to 322 million tons in 2003. Chinese media reports there has been an annual grain shortfall of about 25 million to 35 million tons since 2000. Foreign agricultural projects assist China's need for food security without turning to the world grain market.
Beijing's bid for food security runs parallel to its need for energy security and its desire to project power to the countries along its borders. China and Kazakhstan are poised to build an oil pipeline, giving Beijing a strategic source on the Asian mainland. The agricultural project in desolate western Kazakhstan is probably part of a bid to sweeten the energy deal and bring investment to the Central Asian nation's nonenergy sector.
While Astana tacitly welcomes the Chinese interest in its inhabited lands, Russia has millions of Chinese already living in the Far East and is less interested in Chinese money and more fearful of losing territory to its southern neighbor. Nevertheless, eastern Russia is the site of China's fastest-growing colonies.
China's land deal with Vientiane also helps Beijing project its power south into the Indochina Peninsula. A multimillion-dollar investment greases a lot of wheels in a country with a gross national product just shy of $2 billion, and it helps balance against Vietnam and Thailand's moves to control the country.
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