A Criminal Paradise in SE Asia
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https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-golden-triangle-special-economic-zone/
The Golden Triangle, the mountainous region where the borders of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand meet, is wild and remote, distant in every sense of the word from the centers of all three countries. Away from the few towns, settlement gives way to small plantations of coffee and bananas and then to thick, steeply graded forest. The main thoroughfare is the Mekong, the silty river that runs from the Tibetan Plateau across Indochina all the way to tropical southern Vietnam.
It’s startling, then, to descend a winding road from the highlands and suddenly see skyscrapers, shopping areas, a casino and an artificial lake, dropped as though by magic onto the Laotian side of the river. Just down the bank, cranes hover over another crop of towers that are advancing toward completion. After dark, thumping electronic beats from buildings illuminated with dancing spotlights and neon accents can be heard across the Mekong in Thailand.
This is the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, a vast development project founded by a Chinese businessman named Zhao Wei. Outwardly it resembles a midsize Chinese city; it even has an airport, with a soaring terminal that Zhao hopes will eventually welcome international flights. In interviews and on Chinese social media, he’s said one of his top priorities is to help the Lao people, who are among the poorest in Southeast Asia, “and to provide a bigger contribution to the country’s economic and social development.”
Behind the glassy facades, however, more is going on. The GTSEZ operates as a self-governed enclave, and for the better part of a decade investigators have warned that it’s a hub for criminal activity of every description—a legal no-man’s land. At first, according to the US Department of the Treasury and other agencies that have examined the zone, one of its main businesses was drug trafficking, particularly of methamphetamines. They’re often mixed with caffeine to create cheap pills called yaba or else refined into pricier crystal meth and exported to wealthy countries.
I was up there a couple of months ago. The GTSEZ is on the right side of the picture across the Mekong river. Lots and lots of building going on, much more than show in my picture. Thai people are not too happy about what is happening across the river.
At a ferry terminal in Chiang Saen, the small Thai town directly opposite the GTSEZ, signs warn passengers of what might await them on the other side of the Mekong. “Don’t believe persuasive words that promise high compensation,” says one, illustrated with a cartoon police officer pointing his index finger at passersby. “You will become victims of forced labor and detention.” Chiang Saen residents say they often encounter groups of young people from a multitude of countries toting luggage for long stays, heading for the ferry in the company of unsmiling handlers. One local recalls warning some of them and receiving an angry response from their chaperones.
