China has learned from US policies and has instead opted for more insidious and less "noisy" approaches like hard to repay soft-loans, mass buying of agricultural lands, starting vice businesses like casinos etc which also result in societal changes once the businesses started by Chinese start bringing a sizable influx of Chinese to work in them. See northwest Laos for a direct example (this is not an armchair comment - I have relations there and have seen the changes firsthand over the decade during numerous visits).
Which is fairly tame in terms of securing geopolitical influence and enables more win-win arrangments. Especially with respect to Laos - a landlocked country with (to be blunt) zero long term development prospects. Laos per capital GDP growth has been on pace with booming Vietnam that has access to outsource manufacturing and maritime trade. Laos should be worse off than Cambodia that has 60% of current Laos per capita GDP. Even their largest export/growth sector - hydropower to Thailand is enabled by PRC (not to sound patronizing). PRC infra projects setup Laos to be the battery of region + rail connectivity for other exports = only real viable of short/medium term growth strategy for a undeveloped landlocked country with poor human development. Go look up gdp per capita trends of ASEAN since 2000 when PRC growth started blowing up, also LATM during same period. You'll be hard pressed to find any country whose per capita GDP increased by 8x like Laos. Many are luck with half that. As for societal changes on border regions that benefits from flow of migrant and economic development, that's what happens when countries get richer - things change. If you think that's a bad deal then I'm curious if you can find a better one, especially for a land locked country with no maritime access.
Just repeating "landlocked country" twenty times doesn't paint the clearest picture. They have a lot of untapped mineral resources. It has never been rich but people have had organic means of growth like agriculture. Sure it was never blistering growth but it was steady progress that lifted everyone. Once the PRC money started to flow, they basically bought the agricultural lands and now people who used to own the lands are working as laborers in what used to be their own land. Sure they got that initial money but they never knew how to handle that - so they blew it in the casinos, also operated by the PRC or in drugs (which were always a problem, it being the Golden Triangle area) or other things like tricked-out pickup trucks. Everybody is running after that quick PRC cash and the culture is undergoing rapid changes; signboards are in Mandarin, people prefer to learn Mandarin (even though it is English that connects them to a wider part of the world). Micro level societal changes are more subtle and hard to quantify. The country is basically becoming an extension arm of China
It is easy to look everything through the lens of GDP but it is a poor measure of healthiness of a society from sociological perspective.
Your comment reflects typical nostalgic time bubble lamentation about culture "decline" due to rapid development change. Lots of older gen Chinese miss Mao's China too and complain about the decadence and corruption caused by new wealth. Meanwhile most of country eager to dig themselves out of subsistence are running after quick growth cash and pickup trucks. It sucks being poor.
> Just repeating "landlocked country" twenty times doesn't paint the clearest picture.
...
>untapped mineral resource
Being landlocked is one of the major development traps, it's highly relevant. And the point is Laos is landlocked AND underdevelopped in both infra and human capita. They're not going to be Switzerland without generations of development, if ever. All those untapped resources can't be economically exported relative to sea trade... incidentally why PRC rail development in Laos also game changer. Improves economics of rare metals (gold, Laos other huge export) but less for bulk cargo like agriculture. Laos has zero prospect for being an ag-commodity export power. The most profitable specialty ag trade had export potential of something like 600M. There's simply a ceiling on how much ag can uplift, it's why largest growth sector in last 20 years is industry, which requires capital investments, for a poor country like Laos, it means FDI and period of upheaval caused by new wealth and modes of exploitation.
> never knew how to handle that
Yeah that's what happens to nouvel rich everywhere. That's a sign of development. Laos is not usefully connected to English sphere via geography... again they're landlocked and only large economic connector is PRC. If people want to make money therer it's only prudent to learn Chinese and which will increase integration, especially in border regions. Why would Laos look to rest of world when the fastest growing region is Asia? Learning English is one way street to being brain drained and losing your best.
> GDP but it is a poor measure of healthiness of a society
This is true, ergo why Xi prioritized correcting the excesses of Deng's unbalanced growth that had caused huge problematic culture shifts. Every country that's gone through rapid growth will need manage that transition. Per capita GDP is strongly correlated to Human Development Index for a reason, you need money to make a healthy, educated, productive society. At end of day Laos/PRC relationship enables Laos to have more omney than her geography would otherwise enable. It's not upper income but it's a path out of subsistence if managed properly by Vientiane, which they may absolutely fail at.
Cherry picking what? The op was about Laos, I talked about Laos. Debt trap meme / lie has been debunked by many academics, it's a myth. PRC refinances / renegotiate. It would be really nice for PRC security posture if they actually siezed these ports to build naval bases to gain foothold in indopac, but so far overriding geopolitical interest has been commercial / economic and for a intiative as large as BROR, some of them do poorly. It's the price of exporting massive infra projects around the world to find new markets for domestic overcapacity.
