“It is not hard to see that all the economically active periods in Tengchong’s history were those when we had close contacts and deep exchanges with South and Southeast Asia, and the times of weaker economy were often when such contacts were weakened or interrupted for various reasons,” said Liu Pincheng, vice-head of Tengchong’s bureau of business and trade. The principle continues to work today, Liu said.

Tengchong is located along the Myanmar border. Historically, it served as a key transportation hub along the Silk Road in Southwest China.

The county town is about 200 km from Myitkyina, capital of Myanmar’s Kachin state.

Border trade prospered in Tengchong during the 19th and early 20th centuries, with cargo-laden horses trudging along the trading routes between Tengchong and northern Myanmar year-round.

Tengchong became a base for commerce for many Chinese and foreign businesspeople. More than a dozen international companies were set up in Tengchong. Imports and exports from the city accounted for 30.5 percent of the foreign trade in Yunnan in 1929.

Since China began its policy of reform and opening-up in the late 1970s, Tengchong has been taking advantage of its location, Liu said.

In the 1980s and ’90s, its economy saw rapid development soon after border trade was restarted.

The timber business alone attracted nearly a thousand import and manufacturing companies to Tengchong, bringing in a tidal wave of people, logistics concerns and capital, all of which contributed to the area’s development, Liu said.

In addition, the jade industry was one of the major foreign-oriented industries. Tengchong was once the largest import and processing base for jade in China.

In recent years, the city has sought to take advantage of opportunities brought by the Belt and Road Initiative, as well as by an economic corridor connecting China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and India.

It sped up transformation in the direction of its trade and development to suit the new economic trends.

“Tengchong’s import and export trade has basically formed a new and balanced structure, with imports including agricultural products and minerals, and exports such as engineering machinery, building materials and daily provisions,” Liu said, adding that trade between residents along the border has seen rapid growth in recent years, too.

In the first 10 months of 2018, the value of the city’s imports and exports reached $325 million, an increase of 48.4 percent over 2017.

In the past few years, agricultural cooperation with Myanmar has become one of the biggest growth points in Tengchong’s foreign trade.

There are 22 local enterprises engaged in cooperative agriculture in northern Myanmar, with 40,000 hectares of cultivated area and more than 10 varieties of crops.

Jinxin Trade Co is one of the largest Tengchong-based companies involved in such business. The company has more than 700 trained workers at its six agricultural bases in northern Myanmar, growing plants including bananas, rubber trees, rice, corn and sugar cane.

Since 2009, the company has signed cooperative contracts with four Myanmar companies and plans to develop 24,000 hectares of agricultural land in the area.

“Our Myanmar partners help integrate the land, and our company will provide seedlings, agricultural supplies, technology and management,” said Jiang Xiaohong, executive vice-president of Jinxin.

As of October, the company’s imports and exports in 2018 exceeded 91 million yuan ($13.4 million), and it brought in about 150,000 metric tons of agricultural products, according to Jiang.

Besides contributing to Tengchong’s economy, the company’s business has also greatly benefitted the lives of local farmers in Myanmar by offering more than 6,000 job opportunities－which rises to more than 10,000 during the busy farming season.

“Local farmers’ incomes have grown from an average 800 yuan per year to the current 4,500 yuan in the past few years,” Jiang said.

By 2017, the company had built 343 kilometers of roads near its planting bases, constructed two steel bridges longer than 30 meters, 63 bridges spanning 5 to 20 meters and funded construction of two schools, a church and two small clinics in Myanmar, Jiang said.

Jiang said the company’s experience reflects the development and transformation of Tengchong’s foreign trade over the years.

In 1991, He Yuanshu, president of Jinxin, founded the company on behalf of his village. The company was mainly engaged in the timber import business, growing rapidly and becoming one of the biggest in Tengchong.

After the timber business was banned by the Myanmar government in 2004, the company turned toward agricultural cooperation.

In the past few years, Tengchong has made great efforts to enhance the infrastructure and services of its port to handle the growing traffic between the two countries.

In 2017, the number of people entering or exiting through the port reached 878,000, up 20 percent yearon-year, accompanied by a year-on-year rise in the number of vehicles (47 percent), cargo volume (61 percent) and freight value (51 percent).

Currently, Tengchong airport is undergoing expansion and is expected to become an international transportation port soon, which will help the city build a one-hour aviation circle connecting itself with several countries in South and Southeast Asia.

During a visit to China, Somkid applauded the China International Import Expo and said Thailand strongly supports the free trade cooperation led by President Xi Jinping.

“With a number of global uncertainties, China continues to manifest resolve in support of the free trade system, which shows that the country has become a pillar of global economic development,” he said in an interview with China Daily on Tuesday.

Thailand has good relations with member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Somkid said. Located between Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, Thailand could play the role of coordinator to promote closer relations and better subregional cooperation between the five countries, he said.

“Cooperation in the Yangtze River region, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and the Three Rivers region will grow closer, which will be of greater help to economic cooperation between China and Thailand,” he said, referring to the Jinsha, Lancang and Nujiang rivers.

“Many Chinese companies have come to Thailand to make investments, and I believe the number of investors will keep growing,” he said.

ASEAN members have called for accelerated negotiations on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a proposed free trade framework involving the 10 member states and six partner countries.

“After the outcome of the RCEP negotiations is announced, China’s Belt and Road Initiative will develop faster next year, as it will be able to extend to the free trade zone created by the RCEP, bringing cooperation with surrounding countries to a deeper level,” Somkid said.

“The RCEP and the BRI complement each other, and the Eastern Economic Corridor converges with the BRI,” he said. “Thailand will promote seamless cooperation and integration of different regions and subregions under the RCEP and the BRI.”

Riyadh, Nov 15, 2018 (AFP) –

Five Saudi officials face the death penalty for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi who was dismembered inside the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate, but Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was not involved, the prosecutor said Thursday.

The announcement follows growing international outcry over the killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and critic of the Saudi rulers who was last seen entering the consulate on October 2 to obtain paperwork for his marriage.

Khashoggi died after being drugged and then dismembered, a spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office said in the first Saudi confirmation of how he was killed.

The journalist’s body parts were then handed over to an agent outside the consulate grounds, the spokesman said.

He denied Prince Mohammed had any knowledge of the murder.

The deputy chief of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence, General Ahmed al-Assiri, gave the order to repatriate Khashoggi — and “the head of the negotiating team” that flew to the Istanbul consulate had ordered his murder, the spokesman said.

After repeated denials, Saudi Arabia finally admitted in mid-October that Khashoggi had been murdered at the compound, but blamed it on a “rogue” operation.

The prosecutor has requested the death penalty for the five who “are charged with ordering and committing the crime and for the appropriate sentences for the other indicted individuals,” an official statement published by state news agency SPA said.

It said a total of 21 individuals were in custody in connection with the killing, 11 of whom have been indicted with investigations to continue into the others.

Turkey on Wednesday called for an international investigation into the murder.

Ankara has already shared voice recordings linked to the murder with a number of countries including Saudi Arabia, the United States and its Western allies.

– ‘Global fallout’ –

Khashoggi’s killing has plunged the world’s top oil exporter into its worst diplomatic crisis since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, in which most of the hijackers were identified as Saudi nationals.

After first insisting Khashoggi left the consulate unharmed, Saudi authorities said he was killed in an argument that degenerated into a brawl before finally accepting what Turkey had said virtually from the start — that he was killed in a premeditated hit.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the order to murder Khashoggi came from “the highest levels” of the Saudi government.

Khashoggi’s murder has also led to increased scrutiny of Saudi Arabia’s role in the Yemen war, which has pushed the impoverished country to the brink of famine.

The journalist went into self-imposed exile in the United States in 2017 after falling out with Prince Mohammed.

But as the chairmanship of the Asean passed Thursday from Singapore to Thailand, Bangkok is hoping unrest will not spoil its year in the spotlight.

The annual Asean summit has become a major stop on the diplomatic circuit, even drawing leaders from the US, China, Japan and Russia.

Thailand’s chairmanship means Asean will be hosted by a military dictatorship the same year it plans to hold elections.

The kingdom is notorious for its fractious, disruptive and sometimes violent street politics.

Thailand’s generals will be desperate to avoid a repeat of 2009 when protesters from the pro-democracy “red shirt” faction smashed their way into the summit venue in the resort city of Pattaya demanding elections.

Pandemonium ensued, with a number of leaders having to be rescued from a hotel roof by Thai army helicopters while others fled by boat.

“It was chaotic,” one Southeast Asian diplomat who attended that cancelled summit told AFP.

Back then Thailand was riven by political tensions that pitted the “red shirts” — loyal to ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra — against their “yellow shirt” rivals, allies of the royalist and military elite in Bangkok.

In 2014 an ultra-royalist military clique again seized power, ushering in the most autocratic government Thailand has seen for a generation.

Junta chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha risks lifting the lid on Thailand’s political pressure cooker with elections slated for some time early next year.

That could usher in a return of Thailand’s traditional rambunctious party politics.

But Busadee Santipitaks, a spokeswoman at Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the country was ready to host world leaders regardless of the elections.

“We expect to host more than 170 meetings at various levels next year in Thailand,” she told AFP, adding “tentative dates” for the key summits were under discussion.

A second Southeast Asian diplomat said the Thai government is unlikely to let a repeat of the 2009 debacle occur.

“I don’t think they will allow another such incident to mar their chairmanship,” the diplomat told AFP.

Historically Asean tries to avoid hosting summits in countries the same year they hold elections.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a veteran politics commentator, said the 2009 debacle was a “fiasco, the lowest point in respected and recognized Thai diplomatic annals.”

He said while political unrest could never be ruled out in Thailand, the junta could make their ASEAN hosting duties easier if they deliver a clean and timely election.

“The junta has to ensure that the overall electorate is satisfied with the electoral process and timing,” he told AFP.

“If the junta manipulates at all costs to stay in power after the poll, it could elicit a popular backlash.”