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Chinese Support Gives Laos an Edge Over Powerful Neighbor Vietnam

Ralph Jennings

   TAIPEI, TAIWAN - A Mekong River hydropower dam scheduled to open this
   month worries Vietnam because the country sits just downriver from it
   and would be threatened by lower water flows.

   Officials in Hanoi aren't wildly protesting to the dam's host country,
   Laos, however, because Vietnam knows Laos has support from their much
   larger neighbor, China.

   Vietnamese leaders instead are approaching Laos cautiously about the
   dam, out of fear the tiny landlocked country would seek more of that
   help from Beijing, Southeast Asia scholars say. Vietnam struggles to
   get along with China and resents Chinese expansion in other parts of
   Asia.

   The new fear in Hanoi shows it can no longer treat Laos as a client
   state as it's used to doing, those experts say.

   "Vietnam is worried that Laos is just doing a little bit too much to
   dam up the Mekong," said Murray Hiebert, senior associate of the
   Southeast Asia Program at the think tank Center for Strategic and
   International Studies in Washington. "But Vietnam, although they have
   talked quietly to the Lao, it has not chosen the nuclear option to
   carry on very publicly and condemn Laos."

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