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CHAPTER 6 Harnessing Resources and Labor In the previous two chapters I have delved beneath the data on GMS development presented in chapter 3 to unpack some of the class dynamics of uneven development and regionalization. I have focused especially on the two most powerful “national” actors in the GMS—capitalists and state agencies from Thailand and Yunnan/China. Even in these cases, as I have argued, developmental prospects are palpably uneven in sociospatial terms. In this chapter I examine very briefly two groups of GMS actors whose power is clearly more circumscribed than that of the major actors examined in chapters 4 and 5—albeit each to different degrees and in different ways. First, I look at the Lao state, and particularly the agencies and actors that are involved in harnessing Laos’ hydropower to the project of GMS integration. While these Laotian actors have considerable prospects for enhancing their own accumulation projects through GMS energy development—rather like some of the state hydro-capitalists examined in the previous chapters—they are nonetheless far more constrained in their options and means of exercising power. I show this not only by positioning the contemporary Lao state in relation to external powers like China, Thailand, and Vietnam, but by briefly noting the ways in which the historical evolution of the Lao state has limited its “internal” forms of power and coherence. I argue also that while some Lao officials may indeed become major beneficiaries of GMS integration, their prospects for broadly distributing the gains of projects like hydropower development —even if this is their overriding aspiration—are limited. In Laos, rather like in the case of Yunnan, the prospects for GMS development seem to include considerable “primitive accumulation” and dispossession of village communities. The second case is also partly the story of a less powerful state sitting between more powerful neighbors—namely, Burma, squeezed between China and Thailand (and, more indirectly, India). But in the case of Burma, what I examine is not the forms and limits of power within state agencies per se; rather, it is how a state that is itself engaged in considerable “primitive accumulation” is generating a lowwage migrant working class that helps power GMS development in Thailand. This involves a complex dynamic between the Burmese, Chinese, and Thai states, all of HARNESSING RESoURcES AND lAboR 137 which contribute directly or indirectly to making Burmese workers available for these forms of labor in Thailand. In addition, it involves activities by Thai workers , some of whom have contributed directly or indirectly to the marginalization of Burmese workers within Thailand. But it also involves definite and important forms of agency exercised by Burmese workers, who act not as mere victims— though many are all too frequently victimized—but as industrious aspirants to a better life. Paradoxically, I argue, their considerable efforts in this regard have so far buttressed the prospects for successful capitalist development within the GMS— albeit capitalist development with precisely the extreme sociospatial inequalities which have been noted throughout my discussion. My analysis in this chapter is necessarily brief. My purpose is not to give a comprehensive picture of the activities of either the Lao state’s hydropower developers or Burmese migrant workers in Thailand. Rather, my purpose is to point to how a more comprehensive, class-based picture of the process of GMS development —one that includes the entire range of social actors—could potentially be filled out. If uneven development and highly differential prospects mark the relations between some of the major GMS players in Thailand and China, as I have insisted, then the prospects for extreme differentiation in the outcomes of GMS development must be taken to be even greater when we consider the possibilities and limits for weaker states and less empowered working-class groups—a point that clearly applies as well in the two GMS countries I have not analyzed, Cambodia and Vietnam, as I note in concluding the chapter. laos: From Buffer Zone to the “Battery of asia” Since the 1990s, the term “battery of Asia” has been used to refer to Laos’ envisioned role within the GMS—specifically, that of an energy supplier for other countries (Greacen and Palettu 2007, 103). That the term has taken hold and is used by Lao authors and politicians (e.g., Leechuefoung 2006, 6) is reflective of Laos’ relative position within the region. Unlike the notion of Suwannaphum, with its Thai-centeredness, or Western Development, with its focus on the regional expansion of the Chinese...

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