You are correct about taxes in Laos being minimal. And, yes, there seems to be a cultural factor that is anti-austerity, but that’s to be expected where people had barely enough to subsist 35 years ago and now are tasting prosperity.
With the help of generous assistance from outside, the Lao government provides increasing numbers of needed services introducing them using reasonable, if not wise, priorities. It is paying its employees increasingly fair salaries along with providing better benefits.
How do you have so much “insight” into the Politburo? Perhaps by what organizations of similar names were responsible for in other countries 50 years ago. Look to the present, please.
Corruption always comes with money. The LPDR knows this and has taken positive steps to minimize it. Perhaps that partially explains why its system remains significantly less corrupt than ANY of its neighbors.
Tristan, You and Stephen French now have presented the realities perfectly, and they reinforce my view that the LPDR government acted wisely.
Whether the replacement of the initial outrageous land concession demanded by the Chinese was simply replaced with the plan to collateralize the construction loan with a guarantee of mineral rights results in the same cost to the Laotian people remains unclear.
If it can be shown with no more than reasonable doubt that the size of the loan, factoring in expected economic growth and the likely return on the railroad’s operation, make the current financing plan too risky, perhaps the next stage of negotiations should focus upon a land-concession approach that is more reasonable. As I said, land concessions were what made the North American transcontinental railroad lines feasible, and although the 150+ years of their existence has not been without problem, few today would question the desirability of having them.
The Chinese and Thai (and others) want this rail line very badly. I don’t sense a great deal of enthusiasm for it among common Lao in the north. But Soulivong’s comments about the Party being motivated by opportunities for graft is pure nonsense — fiction created by an imagination that it would be interesting to explore further.
Somehow, the topic of explaining “how high speed train is going to help the poor” has turned out to be the “explanation of what is considered as poor”
Anyway, the point of having a mass transit was because its going to enable cheap transportation, hence, cheaper cost to transport food, people etc, lead to lower cost of living and spread of development to the cheaper mostly rural area. Furthermore, these new system will required professional highly trained worker to operate which will encourage a much better employment as comparing to current 100 odd years old system. Bullet train might cost more, but hell it will certainly be cheaper than air fare and probably more efficient than buses.
I don’t want to belabor the point, but keep in mind that the international/accepted names of countries are often difficult to pronounce by the native speakers of that language.
I’m aware that Laos is hard to pronounce by native Lao speakers since “s” does not occur at the end of words. It’s the same deal with Thailand, where “nd” is not a sound that occurs at the end of words in that language either. Yet we don’t go around saying “Thailan” because that’s how we hear people say it in Thailand therefore it must be more authentic. It just sounds silly.
I know it’s well-intended, but I just hope this trend of pronouncing Laos as Lao dies a peaceful death because it sounds awful.
Well, yes, most Westerners pronounce the “s” because it’s supposed to be pronounced. That’s the name of the country. Just like Thailand is the name of that country. “Thailand” is not a Thai word any more than “Laos” is a Lao word but those are the names of the country.
Not in their own languages of course. In Thai, it would be “Meuang/Prathet Thai” and in Lao “Meuang/Pathet Lao.” But nobody calls countries by what they are called in their native languages. We go to Japan, not Nihon/Nippon, Germany, not Deutschland, etc.
I was wondering if anybody would call me out on that.
I realise it’s not standard practice but I use Lao mainly because it encourages the correct pronunciation. Most westerners pronounce the ‘s’ when you spell it Laos.
And Lao PDR becomes a bit clunky when written over and over again. Thus my preference for Lao. I didn’t realise it was like saying “Thai” as opposed to “Thailand” since when I’ve been in Lao(s) people refer to the people and the country as ‘Lao’ without any difference as far as my ears could determine between the two.
Point noted although I’m still undecided on this. Romanisation of Lao(tian) is itself fraught with uncertainty as you’re no doubt aware!
I assume you’re referring to my comment about the Chinese partner pulling out because it was deemed to be unprofitable? This comes from the document I relied on for much of the number crunching, a speech by Mr. Somsavath Lengsavath, the Vice Prime Minster, advisor of economic development and Director of Lao-Chinese Railway Construction Project for the Lao PDR. In his speech he mentions that Chinese investors saw the rate of return as too low to invest. He continues and says that the Chinese Government proposed that the Government of Lao PDR put a proposal together to borrow 100% of the funding from the EXIM bank. Which I believe is the currently discussed proposal and the one outlined in the speech.
Mr. Lengsvath’s speech does not discuss land concessions, no surprises there, but I would speculate that the guarantee in the form of mineral wealth is an attempt to replace the removal of land concessions. It’s a de-facto land concession anyway.
I won’t amend the article but anybody reading these comments can see yet another side to what is a complicated and long-running story. My focus was more on the numbers and fiscal implications. There are obviously a whole bunch of other concerns and issues surrounding this project, political sovereignty, environmental and social concerns among them.
Assuming somebody is dumb enough to give them the loan, the worst case scenario for GOL is that they default on the debt. I don’t think they’re going to lose any sleep over it.
Laos is not a country where “austerity” is even possible. The country basically collects no tax from citizens and barely pays their workers anyway. What services does the government provide? Not much.
For the party leaders it’s a win/win. They can’t lose. If they can get their hands on the money they will siphon off maybe a tenth of it ($700M)–plenty to keep everybody in the politburo happy. And when eventually the country can’t pay the debt, it defaults. And that’s that. Nobody’s going to come after them to collect the money.
Land the size of a province was the only thing that would have made it financially feasible for the Chinese company. Take out the land and it’s not feasible.
That just shows you how impossible it will be for anybody to recoup the cost of the project.
As for this project, obviously it’s not economical. The real motivation is the enormous amount of graft that it will make possible. The party leaders assume they can siphon off a good chunk of that $7B. It will make them all rich.
I look at the ongoing Red – Yellow conflict not in the context of a “poor vs. rich” struggle, but precisely as a struggle for inclusion into political society that has a very strong element of empowerment.
Wasn’t it Thaksin’s (possibly unintended) success to begin to draw previously un-politicized sectors of society into politics through his “populism” (i somewhat fail to see this term as extremely negative as many appear to do)?
The terms of “Prai”, “Amart”, “Da Sawang”, etc. did not become such powerful metaphors through literal translation (nobody would take a middle or upper class Red Shirt serious when he/she describes himself as a serf), but through the wider context of political and social inclusion/exclusion they and the philosophies behind turned so explosive for traditional Thai social and political structures.
I see this also as an explanation for the extreme hatred that met and meets the Red Shirts by the traditional establishment, as this now becomes a for Thailand quite new relationship between different sectors of society, quite opposite of the old concept of the self described morally good governing over the land and people.
Interesting is that now opposing the Red Shirt concept of “Amartayathipatai” the yellow side has their own concept of “Thammathipatai” on banners in their Sanam Luang protest area. The ex-CPT people there call themselves now “Palang Thammatipatai”.
“Laos rejected a Chinese proposal that included providing a land concession for 10 km on each side of the rail track for the exclusive use of Chinese developers.”
Given that the Laos-China rail line would cover a distance of 421 km, and the land granted to the developers would have covered 10 km on either side of the line, that would represent a 8,420 km2 land concession, or 842,000 hectares.
So the proposed concession to be traded for the railway project would have represented an area similar to that of Laos’ Luang Namtha province- 9,325 km2; and larger than Bokeo province at 6,196 km2.
Yes – and 9 million out of 69 million is very few.
And in addition to that Thailand’s poor have access to free education, access to (almost) free health coverage, and access to work means that local standards in Thailand are far better than in Cambodia, Burma, India, Pakistan, the US (where there are still many people who have no access to free health coverage), and many other countries.
Local standards in Singapore, Malaysia, and Germany are better of course.
Under Thailand’s poor you do not see abject poverty anymore such as in so many other countries of the region (and whose workers come to Thailand in the millions to escape the real poverty in their countries).
That is why Thailand is listed in the link i gave you (which is not anecdotal evidence but UNDP statistics) under *low human poverty*.
Don’t think you understand the World Bank’s format.
It’s based on relative local definitions of poverty – not global.
So what is considered poor in Thailand would not be the same definition in the UK/USA etc so your comparisons are relatively meaningless. The relative and absolute definitions are important and without addressing that nuance your input on this is pretty meaningless.
Who is saying there haven’t been improvements in Thailand? Certainly not me.
You still haven’t provided anything other than anecdotal and personal evidence to quantify your statement as to there being “very few” poor people in Thailand.
The Thai state’s own definition says there are nearly 9million. Maybe this is not enough for you?
More interesting for me is to move the discussion from ‘poverty’ (understood in terms of biological survival) to ‘livelihood needs’. This is not to dismiss the claims of the abjectly ‘poor’, but simply to recognise that they are frequently excluded not only from ‘civil society’ but also ‘poltical society’. Those sleeping under bridges or scavenging through the refuse of the middle classes are unlikely to have the associational means to warrant interest from the political class.
Moreover, ‘livelhood needs’, unlike biologically linked definitions of poverty, are contextually determined, culturally produced affairs. In the Thai context, this includes needs related to ‘status’ and people’s desires to maintain or increase status through access to cash, consumption and the like. In my experience in Thailand, World Bank and other measures of poverty completely fail to take into account these cultural dimemsions of ‘livelihood needs’…
This is one of the many ways to judge poverty in a country – the Human Poverty Index, in which Thailand is listed under the countries with “low human poverty”.
Lets go to your world bank link, which has already been cited – it shows a steady trend of improvement in Thailand. Now we are at 13.2 %.
Cambodia has 30.1%
The US has 15 % (i only could find a wikipedia article on a quick search).
The numbers in the UK are somewhere between 17 and 22%, by whatever count, relative, absolute, or whatever.
Thailand doesn’t look bad at all. But lets get away from statistics. Thailand has a now more than rudimentary health coverage. Even HIV infected get medicine paid by the state. The horrid slums under the bridges which were still a normal sight in Bangkok only 10 years ago and which you can still see in Manila are a thing of the past. There are less and less slums in which people have no access to fresh water, electricity and such.
There is almost no unemployment in Thailand, on the opposite – Thailand is in constant need of migrant labor for its countless factories.
A young Thai, like many of my nephews, can find a job within a day in a factory, and mostly for salaries that come with OT and other benefits way more than the 300 baht minimum wage.
While Thailand has of course many problems, in the regional and global comparison Thailand doesn’t do bad at all, and has over the years improved quite impressively.
So, yes, as compared Thailand has very few “poor”. And even those poor have now access to health coverage, education with many state and private programs of support.
The trend, as shown in the statistics, and reflected in my own personal experience over the past 20 years here is quite clear ongoing improvements.
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Fiscal folly or essential infrastructure
Soulivong,
You are correct about taxes in Laos being minimal. And, yes, there seems to be a cultural factor that is anti-austerity, but that’s to be expected where people had barely enough to subsist 35 years ago and now are tasting prosperity.
With the help of generous assistance from outside, the Lao government provides increasing numbers of needed services introducing them using reasonable, if not wise, priorities. It is paying its employees increasingly fair salaries along with providing better benefits.
How do you have so much “insight” into the Politburo? Perhaps by what organizations of similar names were responsible for in other countries 50 years ago. Look to the present, please.
Corruption always comes with money. The LPDR knows this and has taken positive steps to minimize it. Perhaps that partially explains why its system remains significantly less corrupt than ANY of its neighbors.
Fiscal folly or essential infrastructure
Tristan, You and Stephen French now have presented the realities perfectly, and they reinforce my view that the LPDR government acted wisely.
Whether the replacement of the initial outrageous land concession demanded by the Chinese was simply replaced with the plan to collateralize the construction loan with a guarantee of mineral rights results in the same cost to the Laotian people remains unclear.
If it can be shown with no more than reasonable doubt that the size of the loan, factoring in expected economic growth and the likely return on the railroad’s operation, make the current financing plan too risky, perhaps the next stage of negotiations should focus upon a land-concession approach that is more reasonable. As I said, land concessions were what made the North American transcontinental railroad lines feasible, and although the 150+ years of their existence has not been without problem, few today would question the desirability of having them.
The Chinese and Thai (and others) want this rail line very badly. I don’t sense a great deal of enthusiasm for it among common Lao in the north. But Soulivong’s comments about the Party being motivated by opportunities for graft is pure nonsense — fiction created by an imagination that it would be interesting to explore further.
Desiring a pure people’s politics
Actually I want to rephrase from “good mean in government” to “good political system” since will, I disagree with your notion of “good man”
Desiring a pure people’s politics
Somehow, the topic of explaining “how high speed train is going to help the poor” has turned out to be the “explanation of what is considered as poor”
Anyway, the point of having a mass transit was because its going to enable cheap transportation, hence, cheaper cost to transport food, people etc, lead to lower cost of living and spread of development to the cheaper mostly rural area. Furthermore, these new system will required professional highly trained worker to operate which will encourage a much better employment as comparing to current 100 odd years old system. Bullet train might cost more, but hell it will certainly be cheaper than air fare and probably more efficient than buses.
Desiring a pure people’s politics
Those are excellent, insightful comments by Nick Nostitz above – even by his high standards.
Fiscal folly or essential infrastructure
I don’t want to belabor the point, but keep in mind that the international/accepted names of countries are often difficult to pronounce by the native speakers of that language.
I’m aware that Laos is hard to pronounce by native Lao speakers since “s” does not occur at the end of words. It’s the same deal with Thailand, where “nd” is not a sound that occurs at the end of words in that language either. Yet we don’t go around saying “Thailan” because that’s how we hear people say it in Thailand therefore it must be more authentic. It just sounds silly.
I know it’s well-intended, but I just hope this trend of pronouncing Laos as Lao dies a peaceful death because it sounds awful.
Fiscal folly or essential infrastructure
Well, yes, most Westerners pronounce the “s” because it’s supposed to be pronounced. That’s the name of the country. Just like Thailand is the name of that country. “Thailand” is not a Thai word any more than “Laos” is a Lao word but those are the names of the country.
Not in their own languages of course. In Thai, it would be “Meuang/Prathet Thai” and in Lao “Meuang/Pathet Lao.” But nobody calls countries by what they are called in their native languages. We go to Japan, not Nihon/Nippon, Germany, not Deutschland, etc.
Fiscal folly or essential infrastructure
Hi Soulivong,
I was wondering if anybody would call me out on that.
I realise it’s not standard practice but I use Lao mainly because it encourages the correct pronunciation. Most westerners pronounce the ‘s’ when you spell it Laos.
And Lao PDR becomes a bit clunky when written over and over again. Thus my preference for Lao. I didn’t realise it was like saying “Thai” as opposed to “Thailand” since when I’ve been in Lao(s) people refer to the people and the country as ‘Lao’ without any difference as far as my ears could determine between the two.
Point noted although I’m still undecided on this. Romanisation of Lao(tian) is itself fraught with uncertainty as you’re no doubt aware!
Cheers, Tristan
Fiscal folly or essential infrastructure
Hi Bill,
Thanks for the comment.
I assume you’re referring to my comment about the Chinese partner pulling out because it was deemed to be unprofitable? This comes from the document I relied on for much of the number crunching, a speech by Mr. Somsavath Lengsavath, the Vice Prime Minster, advisor of economic development and Director of Lao-Chinese Railway Construction Project for the Lao PDR. In his speech he mentions that Chinese investors saw the rate of return as too low to invest. He continues and says that the Chinese Government proposed that the Government of Lao PDR put a proposal together to borrow 100% of the funding from the EXIM bank. Which I believe is the currently discussed proposal and the one outlined in the speech.
Mr. Lengsvath’s speech does not discuss land concessions, no surprises there, but I would speculate that the guarantee in the form of mineral wealth is an attempt to replace the removal of land concessions. It’s a de-facto land concession anyway.
I won’t amend the article but anybody reading these comments can see yet another side to what is a complicated and long-running story. My focus was more on the numbers and fiscal implications. There are obviously a whole bunch of other concerns and issues surrounding this project, political sovereignty, environmental and social concerns among them.
Thanks for your contribution and clarification.
Fiscal folly or essential infrastructure
Assuming somebody is dumb enough to give them the loan, the worst case scenario for GOL is that they default on the debt. I don’t think they’re going to lose any sleep over it.
Laos is not a country where “austerity” is even possible. The country basically collects no tax from citizens and barely pays their workers anyway. What services does the government provide? Not much.
For the party leaders it’s a win/win. They can’t lose. If they can get their hands on the money they will siphon off maybe a tenth of it ($700M)–plenty to keep everybody in the politburo happy. And when eventually the country can’t pay the debt, it defaults. And that’s that. Nobody’s going to come after them to collect the money.
Fiscal folly or essential infrastructure
Land the size of a province was the only thing that would have made it financially feasible for the Chinese company. Take out the land and it’s not feasible.
That just shows you how impossible it will be for anybody to recoup the cost of the project.
Fiscal folly or essential infrastructure
As for this project, obviously it’s not economical. The real motivation is the enormous amount of graft that it will make possible. The party leaders assume they can siphon off a good chunk of that $7B. It will make them all rich.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8674824/Chinese-rail-crash-scandal-official-steals-2.8-billion.html
And they are not accountable to anybody, so it will be a lot easier for them to pull it off than a Chinese bureaucrat.
Fiscal folly or essential infrastructure
Please use “Laos” or “the Lao PDR.” Nothing is more grating to the ears of Lao speakers than to hear the country referred to as “Lao.”
Do you think people go around saying, “Welcome to Thai!” instead of Thailand? No, it doesn’t make sense. Doesn’t make sense for Laos either.
Desiring a pure people’s politics
I look at the ongoing Red – Yellow conflict not in the context of a “poor vs. rich” struggle, but precisely as a struggle for inclusion into political society that has a very strong element of empowerment.
Wasn’t it Thaksin’s (possibly unintended) success to begin to draw previously un-politicized sectors of society into politics through his “populism” (i somewhat fail to see this term as extremely negative as many appear to do)?
The terms of “Prai”, “Amart”, “Da Sawang”, etc. did not become such powerful metaphors through literal translation (nobody would take a middle or upper class Red Shirt serious when he/she describes himself as a serf), but through the wider context of political and social inclusion/exclusion they and the philosophies behind turned so explosive for traditional Thai social and political structures.
I see this also as an explanation for the extreme hatred that met and meets the Red Shirts by the traditional establishment, as this now becomes a for Thailand quite new relationship between different sectors of society, quite opposite of the old concept of the self described morally good governing over the land and people.
Interesting is that now opposing the Red Shirt concept of “Amartayathipatai” the yellow side has their own concept of “Thammathipatai” on banners in their Sanam Luang protest area. The ex-CPT people there call themselves now “Palang Thammatipatai”.
Fiscal folly or essential infrastructure
As was previously reported:
http://www.ttrweekly.com/site/2012/08/high-speed-trains-in-low-gear/
“Laos rejected a Chinese proposal that included providing a land concession for 10 km on each side of the rail track for the exclusive use of Chinese developers.”
Given that the Laos-China rail line would cover a distance of 421 km, and the land granted to the developers would have covered 10 km on either side of the line, that would represent a 8,420 km2 land concession, or 842,000 hectares.
So the proposed concession to be traded for the railway project would have represented an area similar to that of Laos’ Luang Namtha province- 9,325 km2; and larger than Bokeo province at 6,196 km2.
Fair trade?
Desiring a pure people’s politics
Yes – and 9 million out of 69 million is very few.
And in addition to that Thailand’s poor have access to free education, access to (almost) free health coverage, and access to work means that local standards in Thailand are far better than in Cambodia, Burma, India, Pakistan, the US (where there are still many people who have no access to free health coverage), and many other countries.
Local standards in Singapore, Malaysia, and Germany are better of course.
Under Thailand’s poor you do not see abject poverty anymore such as in so many other countries of the region (and whose workers come to Thailand in the millions to escape the real poverty in their countries).
That is why Thailand is listed in the link i gave you (which is not anecdotal evidence but UNDP statistics) under *low human poverty*.
Is that so difficult to understand?
Fresh from the fair
If I’m correct, the book “р╕Щр╕▓р╕вр╣Гр╕Щ” is derived from the author’s MA thesis at Thammasat University.
Desiring a pure people’s politics
Don’t think you understand the World Bank’s format.
It’s based on relative local definitions of poverty – not global.
So what is considered poor in Thailand would not be the same definition in the UK/USA etc so your comparisons are relatively meaningless. The relative and absolute definitions are important and without addressing that nuance your input on this is pretty meaningless.
Who is saying there haven’t been improvements in Thailand? Certainly not me.
You still haven’t provided anything other than anecdotal and personal evidence to quantify your statement as to there being “very few” poor people in Thailand.
The Thai state’s own definition says there are nearly 9million. Maybe this is not enough for you?
Desiring a pure people’s politics
More interesting for me is to move the discussion from ‘poverty’ (understood in terms of biological survival) to ‘livelihood needs’. This is not to dismiss the claims of the abjectly ‘poor’, but simply to recognise that they are frequently excluded not only from ‘civil society’ but also ‘poltical society’. Those sleeping under bridges or scavenging through the refuse of the middle classes are unlikely to have the associational means to warrant interest from the political class.
Moreover, ‘livelhood needs’, unlike biologically linked definitions of poverty, are contextually determined, culturally produced affairs. In the Thai context, this includes needs related to ‘status’ and people’s desires to maintain or increase status through access to cash, consumption and the like. In my experience in Thailand, World Bank and other measures of poverty completely fail to take into account these cultural dimemsions of ‘livelihood needs’…
Desiring a pure people’s politics
Old Git, I would suggest to have a look at this link:
http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/data/hd_map/hpi/
This is one of the many ways to judge poverty in a country – the Human Poverty Index, in which Thailand is listed under the countries with “low human poverty”.
Lets go to your world bank link, which has already been cited – it shows a steady trend of improvement in Thailand. Now we are at 13.2 %.
Cambodia has 30.1%
The US has 15 % (i only could find a wikipedia article on a quick search).
The numbers in the UK are somewhere between 17 and 22%, by whatever count, relative, absolute, or whatever.
Thailand doesn’t look bad at all. But lets get away from statistics. Thailand has a now more than rudimentary health coverage. Even HIV infected get medicine paid by the state. The horrid slums under the bridges which were still a normal sight in Bangkok only 10 years ago and which you can still see in Manila are a thing of the past. There are less and less slums in which people have no access to fresh water, electricity and such.
There is almost no unemployment in Thailand, on the opposite – Thailand is in constant need of migrant labor for its countless factories.
A young Thai, like many of my nephews, can find a job within a day in a factory, and mostly for salaries that come with OT and other benefits way more than the 300 baht minimum wage.
While Thailand has of course many problems, in the regional and global comparison Thailand doesn’t do bad at all, and has over the years improved quite impressively.
So, yes, as compared Thailand has very few “poor”. And even those poor have now access to health coverage, education with many state and private programs of support.
The trend, as shown in the statistics, and reflected in my own personal experience over the past 20 years here is quite clear ongoing improvements.