🇻🇳 Xi Jinping has come to town

Hello friends!

What a relief to learn Xi Jinping has gone to Vietnam after all of this hedging. He’s chatting away today so not much news just yet, very keen to follow that one up later in the week. 

Elsewhere, the slow decline of one of Thailand’s grand old parties is speeding up, Laos is fiddling with the policy deck chairs and everyone is freaking out about the Ream base.

We’ll be back on Friday for a Myanmar update. In the meantime, I will have to put up subscription prices next year to keep up with everyone else doing it! Subscribers can get in and stay in at a fixed price (lucky those from 2017 who are still on $50!) so if you’ve been tossing it up now would be a savvy time.

Let’s crack in! 

🇻🇳 Xi Jinping comes to town

FINALLY! Chinese President Xi Jinping is in Vietnam! No more of this ‘a likely visit at some stage’ nonsense, he’s in Hanoi for the first time since 2017.

He’s meeting with Nguyen Phu Trong today so there’s not much just yet but I did like this primer from BBC on the state of the relationship. As always, there are some factors in which China and Vietnam are great pals and others in which they’re deep enemies. Always an intriguing dynamic. 

Will certainly be back later in the week with more on that. 

🇰🇭 Everyone is STRESSED about the Ream Naval Base (except for Cambodia and China)

It’s kind of funny to think that the news of Chinese naval ships at Ream came out via Cambodian Defense Minister Tea Seiha posting on Facebook. That’s so Cambodian you couldn’t write it. Photos shared by the minister more or less line up with satellite imaging showing two vessels at the base, the Associated Press reports. 

Duh, the Chinese navy would be there first, China is helping build it after all. Still, the Americans are nervous Nellies about it, as they have been since construction began: “While we have no comment on this specific development, we have serious concerns about the PRC's plans for exclusive control over portions of Ream Naval Base,” a State Dept spokesperson told Reuters.

The State Department might be cagey, but the US-based think tankers are not. “The arrival of these Chinese warships at Ream exposes China’s long-concealed military aims, marking a major evolution in China’s regional defence posture. To continue dismissing China’s expanding military footprint is to indulge in self-delusion,” Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told CNN.  

Chill out, wrote the Global Times in an editorial over the hubbub. “The US has hundreds of overseas military bases around the world, but does not accept China having any overseas military bases, even one for logistics support purposes, which exposed the US' Cold War mentality of global military hegemony, Song said,” the paper noted, referring to Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert, who had spoken to reporters at the outlet. “By comparison, China only has one overseas base, the PLA Djibouti Support base, which supports China's anti-piracy, UN peacekeeping and humanitarian relief missions in the region.” 

Elsewhere, the rise of a new generation in Cambodia continues as Prime Minister Hun Manet and other nepo-babies jumped up the ranks of the Cambodian People’s Party leadership structure. Hun Manet is now vice-president of the party, while brother Hun Many also got a new gig. “[It’s] because we know CPP has patriotic elites from previous generations who are already old, so [we] need adequate time to prepare for the next generation to take over [leadership],” CPP spokesman Sok Eysan told CamboJA yesterday. 

🇱🇦 To be rich in friends is to be poor in nothing — except for like, daily necessities

I hate to do this, but we’ve got two Radio Free Asias back-to-back today for Laos. Maybe the Global Times link above (a sincere rarity from me) gives us a free pass this week. Anyway! 

Not sure it was necessary to refer to Laos as a ‘backwater’ from the jump here, but the rest looking at the development over the years of relations between the Soviet Union and now Putin’s Russia is fascinating. Laos has continued to vote alongside Russia at the United Nations when it comes to condemning Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine but, as the ANU’s Keith Barney tells it, it’s maybe not smart thinking given the economic woes at home: “It’s almost as if Laos has sort of voted against some of its own economic interests by supporting Russia fairly closely or abstaining on any UN votes.”

And those economic woes are no joke. Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone told the National Assembly last week that the government is preparing a raft of new measures as the economy slides and regular Lao communities struggle. The yes-men over at the Assembly may have applauded, but out on the street of Vientiane, one unidentified punter was not impressed at all: “‘[The prime minister] just talks and talks, nothing happens. He has said this many times before, nothing has gotten better. The government can’t do anything; [the government] announces this measure, then that measure — but the inflation and the kip depreciation are still high, way too high.”

The “palpable sense of apprehension” as Indonesia handed the Asean chair over to Laos back in September might have been misplaced, writes To Minh Son for the Diplomat. Laos has always been a small fish in a medium-sized pond dominated by blue whales and that gives some cause for curiosity if not outright optimism. Expect a bit more regional focus, rather than Indonesia’s Asean as an engine of the world, he notes. Intriguing piece here. 

🇹🇭 A stalwart rage quits the Democrats as Chalermchai rises

Those smarties among us who have predicted the collapse of the Democrats must be feeling fairly smug right about now! The looooong running right-winger party had an absolute shocker in May’s elections leading to plenty of in-fighting and some existential questions. It’s “beyond crisis” now, former party boss/prime minister and heavy-hitter Abhisit Vejjajiva said Monday, as per the Bangok Post. 

Not quite the congratulations message Chalermchai Sri-on was looking for after he was — finally — elected leader of the party over the weekend, bringing to an close months of inertia in the leadership ranks. Chalermchai is a former minister in the Prayuth Chan-o-cha cabinet and has promised his love for the party: “If I draw my blood, it will come out blue with no other colours present.” Jeeze, relax. 

Abhisit, who had also put his hand up for party leader, has since resigned. There’s got to be more goss about this soon, it’s a juicy one. 

A bit more on the Pheu Thai-led plan to extend Songkran, the annual new year water festival, from three days to a whole month. For the SCMP, Mark Footer notes that farmers around the country are already often asked to decrease the water use around the time of the festival each year — what will a month look like? And beyond that, won’t it kind of just become a bit boring? “If we make every single day of April a Songkran festival day, its value will diminish and people will be bored,” Nattavudh Powdthavee at NTU in Singapore said.  

And there’s the Phu Kradeung National Park, where tourism operators and supporters want to see a cable car developed to help would-be visitors check out mountains only accessible currently by hiking. Get out of it, says environmentalists who say the development could leave serious damage to the protected environment. It could make things safer for visitors. “Every year, tourists die on Phu Kradeung,” Phuriwat Chotnopparat, the chief of Loei’s Phu Kradeung district said, as per Thai PBS. The project was first floated in 2012 but has been ham-strung the whole way so maybe don’t even worry about it. 

Chinese tourists, please come back! That’s the message from the government and operators for months as bad PR from the scam compounds bites. Not too sure what to make of this then — a Chinese woman took to TikTok to warn her fellow Chinese women of the behaviour of men on the street in Soi Nana, an infamous party strip in Bangkok. “99% of people walking on this street are definitely not good people,” she told her followers and suggested that the safety of women cannot be guaranteed. The police want to question her over why she made such a video. Ah, that’ll fix things!