Long and Cruel March

TROUBS & NICOLAS DUMONTHEIL — LA LONGUE MARCHE DES ÉLÉPHANTS — FUTUROPOLIS — 2017

Laos is an entirely landlocked country with no direct access to any ocean except the Pacific via the Mekong River. But the Mekong is not an easy river and Laos needs important and secure exit routes.

The first project was conducted with the collaboration of the French EDF and the Chinese. It was the construction of the hydroelectric dam on the Mekong. The first and probably the second were built under the supervision of WWF represented in Vientiane by R. Eve until a little before the COVID-19 pandemic, when he was transferred to Madagascar.

The question of using the Mekong to produce clean electricity is a constant debate because it requires calculating flows and productions according to the climate and the seasons. The most difficult problem is that a retaining dam necessarily retains water from the river while the reservoir fills. Then the effect of these dams is extremely regulated.

These dams are supposed to produce the necessary electricity for the second project which is the realization of a complete railway network in Southeast Asia of which Laos would be literally the center, the country of connection, the hub. It is since the very beginning of December 2021 in the process of realization by the opening of the link from Vientiane to China which thus connects Laos with the Chinese railway network which opens the connection onto the Belt and Road Initiative railway Silk Road which connects Asia, and first of all China with the whole of Europe.

Within a few years, the Southeast Asian railway network should become a reality. The next step is the connection of Vientiane with the capital of Thailand. This development brings criticism and even more than criticism from western entities, be they political, economic, ecological, including allegedly non-committed “volunteers”. It is certain that one thousand kilometers of railroads inaugurated at the beginning of December 2021 are incomparable to the miserable four or five kilometers of railroads that French colonizers left behind them in…