Regional heart: The near-5,000km Mekong is South-East Asia’s longest and most important river with tens of millions in six countries, including China, depending on it daily. — AFP
AFTER the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) was established in 1967, Brunei joined in 1984. More than another decade later Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (the CLMV countries) also joined.
The older members had established themselves earlier in Asean, so most Asean issues concerned them more. However, half the membership share a common underrated feature: the Mekong River.
The near-5,000km Mekong is South-East Asia’s longest and most important river. The lives of tens of millions in six countries, including China, depend on it daily.
In 1957, the United Nations established the Mekong Committee with Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam – but without Myanmar or China. The river that begins in the Tibetan Plateau and flows through China before reaching the CLMV countries and Thailand is the Lancang River, before becoming the Mekong.
The river with two names and multiple jurisdictions over it links six countries geographically through its course, while also dividing them through competing usage. Formal protocols and diplomatic procedures have little salutary effect.
Damming for hydroelectric power or course diversion for irrigation are national motivations conflicting with other countries’ rights and sovereignty. Water volume and flow power are sapped by more than 700 dams on the Mekong’s trunk and tributaries, posing unhealthy zero-sum challenges to good neighbourly relations.
Piecemeal parallel jurisdictions instead of coordinated or collective administration have seen sporadic disputes among Mekong countries. Separating the river into the Lancang and the “Lower Mekong” has divided both the river and mainland South-East Asia.
These challenges involve just five of Asean’s 10 members, so it is only too easy to dismiss them as not representing the whole of Asean’s interests and concerns. But such a presumption would be a mistake.
Asean is the primary institution for a contiguous South-East Asia, for which regional peace, security and prosperity are indivisible. Asean cannot rest if any part of the region is not at peace – particularly if disputes involve Asean’s chief trading partner and the regional superpower China.The Mekong River Basin has traditionally been considered “Asia’s south-west growth circle” poised for enhanced development. Nonetheless, the sub- region has been trapped in a vicious cycle of under-fulfilled promise – the lack of development discouraging private investment, in turn resulting in a continued lack of development.
Government projects therefore predominate, ostensibly in each country’s public interests, thus worsening official relations. But problems can still be avoided or minimised.
Malaysia has been at the forefront of promoting integrated regional development. In Decem-ber 1990 then prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad unveiled the East Asia Economic Grouping, proposing it to visiting Chinese Premier Li Peng who endorsed it.
Throughout the 1990s, Malay-sia lobbied to expedite the CLMV countries’ Asean membership. By the end of that decade, Malaysia conducted a feasibility study of railway linkages from Singapore through the Mekong Basin to China, with the possibility of connecting with Russia’s Trans-Siberian Railway.
Malaysia had headed a special committee of the Mekong Basin Project to boost development in the subregion. In November 2000 Dr Mahathir met Chinese Pre-mier Zhu Rongji to discuss prospects for the pan-Asian highway and railway.
But the enthusiasm contained a note of caution from the 1997 Asian financial crisis – financial prudence was essential.
In 2018 Dr Mahathir was in Beijing again, now to meet Zhu’s successor Li Keqiang on Malaysia’s need for financial prudence in their joint railway project following Malaysia’s vast losses from the 1MDB financial scandal.
Despite challenges, the Asean region remains committed to infrastructure development. Adequate infrastructure is a universal catalyst for establishing major productive sectors.
The 2010 Asean Summit in Vietnam launched the Master-plan on Asean Connectivity conceived around infrastructure development. However, like many such well-intentioned programmes, sufficient development finance can be scarce.
In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared China’s proposed One Belt, One Road (later, Belt and Road Initiative) in Kazakhstan. He announced it the following year in Indonesia, bringing it home to the Asean region.
This presented South-East Asia with a triple promise it never previously anticipated: project funding; extended connectivity all the way from East Asia through Central Asia, West Asia and Africa to Europe and Britain; and swift, confident, and efficient execution as evidenced in China’s own rapid infrastructure development.
Yet however compelling large transcontinental projects may seem compared with smaller subregional ones, the same ingredients remain vital: Civility, consultation, consistency. Be civil to neighbouring countries affected, consult them when a shared resource like a river is involved, and be consistent in doing so.
Cambodia may want to rethink projects like its Funan Techo Canal, especially following complaints and regrets over similar projects. China may wish to recalibrate its fervent dam construction, to avoid damaging sensitive regional relations as well as the environment.
It is not simply modifying river flow that is at issue.
What remains hopeful is that things can be improved considerably with better due diligence before commissioning and designing any project, and improved project management thereafter.
Bunn Nagara is Director and Senior Fellow at the BRI Caucus for Asia-Pacific (Bricap), and Honorary Fellow at the Perak Academy. The views expressed here are solely the writer’s own.
