The Mekong Arranged Rearranged

Flanked by a fast-growing China hungry for markets and energy and other resources, the Mekong region is a target of competing local, national, regional, and transnational as well as commercial interests. There are many "Mekong regions" and claims to its water, heritage sites, tourism potential, and other resources affect one or all the countries. This volume contains provocative and sometimes conflicting views about history, geopolitics, and current dilemmas by scholars across the region.

In the context of massive environmental problems in Southeast Asia, the countries in the region have decided – at least in some instances – to create regimes to solve these problems jointly. This empirical observation is surprising, given the Southeast Asian countries’ general reluctance to regional cooperation, the governance and budgetary constraints that are typical for developing countries and the huge heterogeneity of the involved countries in terms of environmental vulnerability, economic capacity and hegemonic power. This book analyzes the creation and effectiveness of two environmental regimes, one on transboundary haze pollution and a second on resource management of the Mekong. It will be shown that regime creation is extremely problematic and strategies to overcome conflicting actor constellations are mostly lacking.

The Mekong River is a vital and valuable resource, with huge development potential for the six states through which it flows. Given the significant asymmetry of power between those states, however, there is a real risk that some might utilise it to the detriment of others. Without a sense of regional belonging, it is difficult to imagine that these states and their constituent communities will take regional imperatives to heart, participate in joint regulatory frameworks, or adopt behaviours for upstream-downstream and lateral cooperation over the appropriation and use of their shared resources. How effectively has closer interdependence of the Mekong countries accommodated the development of a political-social-cultural space conducive to the growth of a regional "we-ness" among not only political elites, but also the general public? The contributors to this volume approach this question from a range of directions, including the impacts of tourism, regional development programmes, the Mekong Power Grid, and Sino-US rivalry. This edited volume presents valuable insights for scholars of international relations, Asian studies, development studies, environment studies, policy studies, and human geography.

This book explores river tourism from a range of perspectives including river uses, heritage, management, environmental concerns, and marketing. The book has 15 chapters and an index. The intended readership includes researchers and students of leisure and tourism.

The world’s key resources of energy, food and water, which are closely connected and interdependent on each other, are coming under increasing pressure, as a result of increasing population, development and climate change. In the case of China, following its recent economic surge, energy, food and water are already nearing the point of shortage. This book considers how China is working to avoid shortages of energy, food and water, and the effect this is having internationally. Subjects covered include domestic policy debates on China’s resource strategies, challenges for managing transboundary waters related to China, responses from various regions and countries to China’s ‘Go Out’ strategy, and China’s increasing energy links with Russia and declining agricultural trade with the United States. The book concludes by discussing in comparative perspective China’s outward resource acquisition activities and the consequent policy implications.

Since the 1990s, regional organizations of the United Nations and international financial institutions have adopted a new dynamic of transnational integration, within the framework of the regionalization process of globalization. In place of the growth triangles of the 1970s, a strategy based on transnational economic corridors has changed the scale of regionalization.

This book examines the countries of Southeast Asia and how their relations with China have been transformed under the Chinese President Xi Jinping with intensified territorial assertiveness and increased economic diplomacy.