Neighbourly relations – the influence of Vietnam, China and Thailand on Laos

Throughout its history, Laos has been hugely influenced by its three powerful neighbours – Vietnam, China and Thailand.

Lao and Vietnamese

Traditional antagonisms between Lao and Viet are rooted in their disparate cultural godfathers, India and China, and the widely divergent Brahmin and Mandarin world-views – but they have also been sharpened by practical realities. To begin with, and most importantly, there are a great many more Vietnamese than there are Lao, making the former of necessity an expansionist people. An inherent suspicion of their serious, hard-working and disturbingly numerous Viet neighbours runs deep in the psyche of most Lao.

The French colonialists actively encouraged the migration of Vietnamese to Laos. More than 50,000 Vietnamese moved into Laos during this time, including large numbers of technicians, artisans, lower-ranking officials, schoolteachers, doctors and other professionals. By 1939 the public services of Laos were largely staffed by Vietnamese, and the urban population, too, was predominantly Viet Kieu (migrant Vietnamese settlers). 

After independence in 1953, Viet Kieu made up 7 percent of the total population, and ethnic Chinese a further 2–3 percent. In urban terms the contrast was far more marked with Viet Kieu and Chinese combined constituting 57 percent of the population of Vientiane and 85 percent of that of Pakse.

Political links with Vietnam

Meanwhile, in the mountain fastnesses of Sam Neua and Phongsali in the far north, opponents of the Royal Lao regime – dissident Lao, who enjoyed strong links with Vietnam – set up the communist Pathet Lao. It was widely expected that, following the Pathet Lao victory and the establishment of the Lao PDR in 1975, Vietnamese migration to Laos would resume in a big way. This did not prove to be the case, however. After 1975 relations between the two new communist states was marked more by continuing military cooperation, and the presence in Laos of Vietnamese advisers and specialists at all levels than by any ethnic migration. At the height of the Sino-Vietnamese hostilities of the early 1980s, between 50,000 and 80,000 Vietnamese troops were moved into northern Laos to deter further Chinese attack. 

Some migration – or re-migration – of Vietnamese people to Laos took place through the late 1980s and early 1990s, but this was at a time when both Thai and Western influence was markedly on the increase in the Lao PDR. A census of the Vientiane population found 15,000 Vietnamese living illegally in the capital. Most of them were promptly deported back to Vietnam. 

China

Following the fall of Saigon in April 1975, and the establishment of Communist rule over Laos in December of the same year, the new Lao authorities did their best to keep on good terms with both Hanoi and Beijing. Vietnam was undoubtedly the dominant power in Indochina, but China was invited to stay on and to continue road-building and other developmental aid in the northwest of the country as far south as Luang Prabang. 

Relations deteriorated for a time in the 1980s, but since a rapprochment later in that decade China’s political and economic influence, particularly over northwestern Laos, is paramount - and increases each year as China's power grows. Standards of living are already rising for the residents of Luang Nam Tha and Bokeo, strategically located between the fast-expanding economies of China and Thailand, as they begin to feel the benefits of free trade. In economic terms the area is rapidly becoming more closely tied to China than it has been at any time since the French annexation in 1896.

Thailand

Meanwhile the third and culturally closest of Laos’s big neighbours, Thailand, is making a significant comeback in the friendship stakes. Thai cultural influences permeate Laos, and Thai television and radio – readily comprehended by most Lao in a way that simply doesn’t hold true for either Vietnamese or Chinese – are watched avidly throughout the country. It seems that, at long last, the legacy of Lao suspicion of its brasher, larger and stronger neighbour to the west of the Mekong is disappearing. Road – and now rail – bridges are springing up fast, and many Lao, both in government and ordinary citizens, now see Thailand as a useful counterweight to their Vietnamese and Chinese neighbours, as well as an economic role model to follow in the future.