Roaming the streets of Kunming, the capital city of southwest China’s Yunnan Province, one can’t help but notice the enticing aroma of lemongrass, galangal, and coconut milk wafting from Thai food stalls, along with the variety of Vietnamese coffee beans on display.
Data from Meituan and Dianping, popular city-guide and review platforms akin to Yelp in China, showed that more than 160 new restaurants serving Southeast Asian cuisines have opened in Kunming this year alone, with the majority featuring food from Mekong countries, including Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
One such culinary ambassador is Nannaphat Ananmethaphat from Thailand, who started her first restaurant in Kunming in 2005 and now operates eight Thai restaurants in the city. “When I started, local residents were unfamiliar with Thai flavors,” she said. In those early years, Ananmethaphat carefully adapted her recipes, blending local Yunnan ingredients with traditional Thai spices.
The fusion of flavors, increasingly embraced by residents, is a byproduct of the ever-closer people-to-people exchanges. It is also a microcosm of the deepening cultural ties and economic connections between China and the Mekong countries.
The deepening ties culminated at the eighth Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Summit, which concluded in Kunming on Thursday. Chinese Premier Li Qiang attended the summit, calling on the six GMS members to upgrade their cooperation following a productive partnership spanning three decades since the mechanism’s establishment.
The six GMS members — China and the five Mekong countries — launched the GMS Economic Cooperation Program in 1992 to pool efforts to improve regional infrastructure and enhance trade, investment and economic growth.
Over the past three decades, the GMS has increasingly become an important platform for China and the Mekong countries to discuss cooperation and promote common development. Their cooperations have yielded fruitful results, covering various fields such as infrastructure construction, economic and trade cooperation, cultural exchanges, and innovation.
In trade alone, China’s trade with the Mekong countries surpassed 200 billion U.S. dollars in the first half of this year, a 12 percent increase from the same period last year.
ACCELERATED CONNECTIVITY
The China-Laos Railway, which connects the Lao capital, Vientiane, with Kunming, has transported more than 41.7 million passengers and 46.7 million tonnes of cargo, including 10.7 million tonnes of cross-border goods, since its launch in late 2021.
This vital link has transformed Laos from a landlocked country into a connectivity hub. It has expanded the international logistics network, significantly reducing transportation costs and time and injecting vitality into the regional economy.
Wang Feng, a manager at an agricultural company in Yunnan, shared how this new route had opened doors for his firm. “We used to mainly operate domestically, but now, thanks to cold-chain logistics via the China-Laos Railway, we are exporting over 20 types of vegetables to the Mekong nations.”
The cross-border road transportation has also seen great progress. Over the past decade, the GMS road network has expanded by almost 200,000 kilometers, and overland road freight has almost doubled, paving the way for regional economic growth.
In June, the GMS cross-border pilot transportation project saw a convoy depart from Kunming and travel across China, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia, ultimately reaching Phnom Penh after a six-day journey that spanned approximately 2,500 kilometers.
This trial run was part of the actions to implement the consensus reached at the Eighth Meeting of the Joint Committee for the GMS Cross-Border Transport Facilitation Agreement (CBTA).
“We can now achieve cross-border transport within the region without changing vehicles or containers,” said Li Sai, manager at Yunnan Construction and Investment Group’s International Multimodal Transport Division. The convoy carried vegetables, building materials, and other goods for export and returned with agricultural produce like fruits and coffee from Cambodia and Thailand.
SHARED FUTURE
Innovation and industrial collaboration are crucial aspects of the GMS partnership. Premier Li highlighted the need for the countries to focus on areas like new-energy batteries, automobiles, and photovoltaic industries, and expand cooperation in emerging areas such as clean energy, smart manufacturing, big data and smart cities.
Leading Chinese renewable energy firms are working closely with businesses from Mekong countries and investing in new facilities to produce innovative and locally adapted products, thus actively contributing to the region’s green transition.
In July, BYD opened an electric vehicle (EV) plant in Thailand, the automaker’s first Southeast Asian factory. Previously, Chinese battery giant CATL reached an agreement with Arun Plus Company Limited (Arun Plus) in Thailand to serve local EV manufacturers, enhancing Thailand’s potential to become the battery production hub of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
“China’s technological development across various sectors has brought tangible benefits to neighboring countries,” said Seng Long, an entrepreneur from Cambodia who operates a metal-processing company. “Our raw materials, equipment, and technology all come from China, and some of these partnerships have lasted for over a decade.”
China has decided to issue “Lancang-Mekong visas” to the five Mekong countries and issue five-year multiple-entry visas to qualified businesspeople to facilitate business exchanges.
“I hope that business between China and neighboring countries will become increasingly convenient in the future and that we can introduce more advanced technologies from China,” Seng Long added. ■
(Reporting by Wu Xiaoyang, Zhao Peiran, Zhao Cailin, Tian Ying; Video reporters: Sun Min; Video editors: Liang Wanshan, Zhu Cong and Luo Hu