U.S. Sees "Threat" In The Golden Triangle
BANGKOK, Thailand -- In Southeast Asia's crime-infested
Golden
Triangle, Chinese entrepreneur Zhao Wei is
constructing a sprawling
casino resort and airstrip
despite being sanctioned by the U.S.
Treasury Department
as a "threat to the United States" because of
his
"horrendous illicit activities".
In addition to
those projects in northwest Laos, Mr. Zhao is
expanding
his financial reach into northeast Laos'
prehistoric Plain of Jars and
delving into southern Laos
close to Vietnam's frontier.
U.S. allegations
sanctioning Mr. Zhao include "engaging in
drug
trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering,
bribery, and
wildlife trafficking, much of which is
facilitated through the Kings
Romans Casino," the
Treasury Department said.
"Zhao is an unsavory Chinese
gangster, and founder of the Hong
Kong-registered Kings
Romans Group," Paul Chambers, an American
lecturer in
Southeast Asian studies at Thailand's Naresuan
University,
said in an interview.
"Geopolitically,
he represents the informal head of a
semi-formal,
strategically located, base for China where
Laos, Myanmar [Burma], and
Thailand come together -- the
Golden Triangle.
"There are increasing numbers of
powerful Chinese businessmen
ensconced in Laos who have
loose relations with Beijing. Some have
become crime
bosses in the region," Mr. Chambers said.
Mr. Zhao's
core project -- the Kings Romans Casino -- is being
built
on the Mekong River which the Golden Triangle
countries jointly
patrol, led by armed Chinese vessels,
to tackle cross-border crime.
Several of the resort's
tall modern buildings, including a
crown-topped casino,
already form a panoramic display visible from
Thailand's
side of the strategic river.
The Kings Romans Casino
reportedly relies on Chinese currency, Chinese
staff and
police.
It enjoys economic sweeteners bestowed by the
secretive,
authoritarian, one-party Laotian government,
including a 99-year lease
which began in 2007 in Bokeo
province's Special Economic Zone [SEZ].
"It is one of
several Laotian enclave developments in which
China
appears to exercise a form of extraterritoriality
by administering
almost every aspect of the zone," the
Lowy Institute in Australia
warned in a June
report.
"Zhao Wei’s longer-term vision imagines the
SEZ as a valley of shiny
futuristic towers, artificial
lakes, sports stadiums, industrial
parks, and a
pharmaceutical research center.
"These plans are not fanciful," the institute said.
The Golden Triangle
earned its prestigious nickname decades ago from
easy
profits gained by international smugglers who bought
illicit,
locally grown opium from impoverished tribes and
refined the black tar
into heroin powder for addicts
worldwide.
In relatively underdeveloped southern Laos,
Mr. Zhao met Saravan
province's Governor Phoxay Xayasone
in March to survey land for
another airport, and more
agricultural and tourism projects, plus an
upgraded road
to nearby Vietnam, according to U.S.
government-funded
Radio Free Asia.
He also wants a
slice of northern Laos' Plain of Jars for tourism
and
agricultural businesses, despite its UNESCO World
Heritage status
protecting the region's hundreds of
mysterious stone cylinders
scattered in Xieng Khouang
province.
In October, closer to his Kings Romans
Casino, Mr. Zhao ceremoniously
broke ground to construct
a $50 million port at Ban Mom village
further north
upriver on the Mekong, near China's Yunnan
province.
The thankful Laotian government sent Deputy
Prime Minister Bounthong
Chitmany to the event.
The
port will include cargo facilities, offices, a hotel and
other
infrastructure capable of handling Golden Triangle
countries' imports
and exports.
Mr. Zhao is
apparently shrugging off the Treasury’s Office of
Foreign
Assets Control, and has not been prosecuted by
Beijing.
In 2018, the Treasury designated "the Zhao
Wei network" as
"transnational criminal organizations
(TCO) that pose a threat to the
United States," said
Treasury Under-Secretary for Terrorism and
Financial
Intelligence, Sigal Mandelker.
"The Zhao Wei crime
network engages in an array of horrendous
illicit
activities," Ms. Mandelker said at the
time.
"Operating largely through the Kings Roman
Casino, the Zhao Wei TCO
facilitates the storage and
distribution of heroin, methamphetamine,
and other
narcotics for illicit networks," the department said,
after
coordinating with the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration.
Mr. Zhao denounced the Treasury's
sanctions as "a unilateral,
extraterritorial,
unreasonable and hegemonic act of ulterior motives
and
malicious rumor-mongering."
His response in 2018 -- in
Chinese and Lao languages -- described his
resort and
other facilities as "legal, ordinary business
operations,
supervised by the legal authorities of the
relevant countries that
have not harmed the interests of
any country or individual."
Mr. Zhao, from northeast
China's Heilongjiang province, previously
operated a
casino in Mong La, in Myanmar's chunk of the
Golden
Triangle across from Yunnan province.
He
also ran a casino in China's gambling-friendly Macau, a
former
Portuguese colony near Hong Kong.
China's government and citizens are the biggest foreign investors in tiny Laos.
They are involved in several 99-year leases
in the lightly populated
countryside which abound in
natural resources amid steep mountains,
forests, and
rivers.
The top foreign investment is a
Chinese-funded, $6 billion high-speed
railway, nearing
completion under China’s international Belt and
Road
Initiative.
The railway links southern China
at the Laotian border town of Boten,
runs vertical across
northern Laos, and reaches the capital Vientiane
on the
Mekong River where it forms part of the Laos-Thailand
border.
Its 260 miles (414 kilometers), 75 tunnels,
and 67 bridges are
expected to begin operating in
2022.
China predicts the train will eventually create
a lucrative and
influential China-Indochina Economic
Corridor connecting Shanghai and
Singapore.
In
comparison, U.S. relations with Laos are mostly trapped in
the
horrors of Washington's deadly legacy.
In an
unusually blunt admission to a former enemy
nation,
then-President Obama told an audience in
Vientiane in 2016:
"Over nine years, from 1964 to
1973, the United States dropped more
than two million
tons of bombs here in Laos -- more than we dropped
on
Germany and Japan combined during all of World War
II.
"It made Laos, per person, the most heavily bombed
country in
history," Mr. Obama said in the Lao National
Cultural Hall.
"Villages and entire valleys were
obliterated. The ancient Plain of
Jars was devastated.
Countless civilians were killed," he said during
the
first visit to Laos by a U.S. president.
"Our new partnership will continue to deal with the painful legacy of war."
His remarks reflected much of Washington's current relations with Vientiane.
"U.S. involvement in
the country, through bilateral relations, is more
like a
compensation for the consequences of the Vietnam War, where
the
U.S. left unexploded bombs," Titipol Phakdeewanich, a
political
scientist at Thailand's Ubon Ratchathani
University, said in an
interview.
Washington's
multi-million-dollar aid includes clearing
countless
unexploded U.S. bombs which litter the
countryside and continue to
kill and maim unsuspecting
villagers.
Washington also engages with Vientiane
through a regional Mekong-U.S.
Partnership, which evolved
from Mr. Obama’s Lower Mekong Initiative to
prevent
China manipulating the upper flow of the Mekong with
dams.
"The Mekong-U.S. Partnership excludes
China...signifying the challenge
of the rising power of
China," Mr. Titipol said.
Benefitting from two
powerful rivals vying for favor, Vientiane's
ruling
Communist Party is "able to consolidate its power through
good
relations with both China and the West," he
said.
***
Richard S. Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based
American foreign correspondent
reporting from Asia since
1978. Excerpts from his two new nonfiction
books,
"Rituals. Killers. Wars. & Sex. -- Tibet, India, Nepal,
Laos,
Vietnam, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka & New York" and
"Apocalyptic Tribes,
Smugglers & Freaks" are
available at
https://asia-correspondent.tumblr.com