After Golden Boten City fell in the Hand of Criminals: The second Chance

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Ein Beitrag geteilt von Blink (@blinkdotla) am Jan 10, 2019 um 8:40 PST

Waiting for customers: Laotian workers at a restaurant in the border town of Boten

Fore some years Boten (磨丁市), in the middle of tropical forest, at the border of China and Laos, has been a Ghost City, where travellers found closed hoteltowers and shops or apartment complexes with few life. This after China had asked Laos to stop the casino operations, that had fallen into the hands of organized crime. An exodus of around tenthousand people followed, few remained in Boten, among them a Chinese family, whose children go to school in China (read).

Golden Boten City has been closed down - will it wake up again with help from China? This question was published by this blog in 2013. Now there are strong signs of resurrection. Chinas "One Belt One Road"-Strategy brings two railways to this jungle town: Yuxi-Mohan Railway in Yunnan and the Mohan-Vientiane Railway in Laos are under construction and declared to be operational in 2021. They are part of the planned connection from Kunming to Singapore, a major transport route for the export of Chinese goods and the import of resources.

Boten today looks not very different from the time of Golden Boten City. Guests pay with Chinese Yuan or Alipay, Mandarin is the most important language and the local clocks show Beijing time, 60 minutes ahead of Laos. Lao police cannot be seen, the public order is organized by a Chinese surveillance team, as elmundo.es reports. "It is a city in Laos under Chinese management," comments Huang Huang, worker at a Chinese company. And as the opeing of the two railways is coming nearer, the prices are rising. "We have already bought flats for resale later. Last year the square meter was worth 2,000 yuan. Now it costs 4,500 and all that have been built are already sold", he says. Since 2017 there is a lot of construction work ongoing in Boten. "The idea is to create a city where 300'000 people can live. It will take 15 years. Boten will be one of the most strategic stops on the train", says Yang Kai Chang, the tenant of the old Hotel Jingland. The former Golden casino has been converted into a gem emporium with a lot of Chinese customers, "chandeliers aglow above marble floors and rich red carpets", writes nytimes.com. An old nightclub has been transformed into a duty free mall. With the constructions works the nightlife has come back. Club Eccellente with its transvestite cabaret shows opens the doors as in the old days of Boten sin city.

The new Boten is called Beautiful Boten Specific Economic Zone. According to Laotian media Chinese investors want to pur more than $1.5 billion into the new development. Boten Economic Zone Development and Construction Group, a Chinese company headquartered in Kunming, seems to play an important role. Will Doig, a journalist from New York, describes it in his book "High-Speed Empire: Chinese Expansion and the Future of Southeast Asia". In 2017 he talked to local manager Callan Cheng, who said: “We control all of Boten, the entire city”, According to Doig, "the company is the municipal government, administering Boten’s taxes and finances, public utilities, telecommunications infrastructure, sanitation, emergency services, its hotels, markets and, of course, the duty-free mall. Likewise, nearly everyone working in Boten is on the company payroll. The Lao public sector has minimal involvement." Or in the words of Callan Cheng: “They’ve authorized us to take care of things.”

Sinohydro Bureau 14 Co. has signed a construction contract with Laos Boten Special Economic Zone Development Group to build Boten Central Business District (CBD) (phase II) in Boten. The project covers a total floor area of 500,000 square meters. China and Laos have signed a lot of plans for the Boten Economic Zone, for example "China Laos honing - the overall plan for the construction of the Grinding Economic Cooperation Zone" (中国老挝磨憨—磨丁经济合作区建设共同总体方案) and China Laos honing - the overall plan for the common development of the Grinding Economic Cooperation Zone (中国老挝磨憨—磨丁经济合作区共同发展总体规划). China Haicheng Group 中国海诚集团积 is another company involved according to yn.sina.com.cn. They got funding from Hong Kong Fuk Hing Travel Entertainment Group Ltd according to Vientiane Times. Fuk Hing Travel Entertainment Group? Its leader Wong Man Suen was the partner of the Laos authorities for the closed Golden Boten City. "It comes as a surprise to learn the Lao officials have decided to give Wong yet another chance", writes forbes.com.


Read more:
Chinas Railway for Laos: Fast Railway Building between Yuxi and Mohan in Yunnan
Chinas Railway for Laos: The Luang Prabang Mekong Bridge in progress
Macao on the Mekong: How Chinese money flows into the Golden Triangle - US sanctions against Zhao Wei and Kings Romans Group Casino
After the Execution of Naw Kham in China: Mekong Safety remains an Issue

Macao at Mekong: How Chinese money flows into the Golden Triangle

Picture by johntrathome

From the Thai border near the town of Chiang Saen you see two golden domes dominating the Laotian side of the Mekong River. If you cross the river you enter the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Welcome to the "Macau on the Mekong": The casino at Tonphueng in Bokeo province (see video on video 1 on youtube and video 2 on youtube) has been built by Chinese money and investors with links to Macau. Alongside the waterfront boats disgorge Lao and Thai businessmen, and gamblers. Beneath the Laotian immigration officers and some policemen you will meet a lot of Chinese people. The Casino has the Chinese name Jin Mu Mian (金木棉, "golden kapok"). The casino wants to attract visitors from countries, where casinos are forbidden: China and Thailand.

What is a Special Economic zone in Laos gives not mainly work to Lao people. "Of the more than 4,500 people employed in the zone, only around 500 are Laotian", notes Tom Fawthrop in South China Morning Post. And he continues: "The investors who signed the contract to create the SEZ with the Laotian government back in April 2007 have pledged to change the image of the Golden Triangle, once the epicentre of the global heroin trade, into a tourist haven with glittering nightclubs, ecotourism and a new international airport. Yet despite the influx of cash and grandiose plans, there are plenty of concerns about the project, with a prominent Thai business leader and a UN agency worried that the centrepiece casino will be used to launder money from the region's infamous drug trade." And he adds: "And despite the scale of the multibillion-dollar project, the identity of the investors remains largely a mystery."

The man who runs the operation in the name of the King Romans Group (KRG) is 60-year-old Zhao Wei(赵伟), chairman of the SEZ and KRG president (see Zhao Wei on youtube). He says he is vice-chairman of the Macau-Asean Business Association, but the journalist could not track this group down. Critics say that he is connected with the casinos of Mong La, in the Shan area of Myanmar, which many believe belong to the former drug baron Sai Leun, aka Lin Ming Xian (read asianews.it). Clear ist, that Zhao Wei has run a casino in Mongla, the Sin-City in Myanmar, situated opposite the town of Dalou in China's Yunnan province. Mong La in the 1990s established itself as a Chinese tourism hub for gambling, prostitution and transsexual cabaret shows - not to mention rampant money-laundering. 2005 Beijing, after reports of corrupt officials investing state funds on Myanmar gaming tables, banned Chinese officials and citizens from traveling to Mong La. The King Romans Group (Dok Ngiew Kham) is registered in Hong Kong. Its investors are said to be from Hong Kong, Macau and Yunnan Province.

For the moment, there is the casino, a restaurant and a two storey hotel, designed to resemble Beijing’s Forbidden City, and a 30-kilometre road to the nearest town, the regional capital Ban Houei Xay. Later the complex should include a golf course, karaoke bars, massage parlours, a swimming pool, hotels, clinics and shopping centres (see promotion video on youtube. KRG also dreams about an international airport. The government of Laos has signed over 10,000 hectares to the King Romans Group on a 99-year lease, including Don Sao Island. According to Tom Fawthrop KRG plans to invest US$2.25 billion US by 2020 (the entire Laotian national budget in 2009 was estimated at US$1.13 billion). And Zhao Wei is planning a city of 200 000 residents at the end. This would be the second largest town of Laos after Vientiane.

Crucial to the project is the Kunming -Bangkok Expressway. The China section is completed; the only major work remaining is the construction of a bridge spanning the Mekong and linking Laos and Thailand. The 4th Thai-Lao friendship bridge between Chiang Khong and Houay Xay is expected to be completed between late 2013. Some people fear, that Houay Xay could turn into the next Boten, a border town at the Lao-Chinese border, where Chinese traders and workers outnumber locals (read more on Chiang Rai Bulletin) and a Chinese casino had to be closed.

Picture by Prince Roy
Chinese stores and restaurants lining the road to the casino in the Lao border town Boten

The Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone (Homepage: laosez.com) lies "in the stomping grounds of one particularly powerful drug runner named Naw Kham", notes Lauren Hilgers. She writes: "Naw Kham is a Shan minority from the Burmese side of the border and a wanted man in Thailand, Burma, Laos, and China. His forces (called the “Hawngleuk militia”) exert control through Laos and northern Thailand. His speedboats are said to show up on the river and levy taxes on passing cargo boats, particularly the Chinese ones. In 2008, Naw Kham’s forces shot up a Chinese patrol boat. In April 2011, 34 crew members on three Chinese boats were briefly taken hostage by a group of pirates assumed to be answering to the drug lord. This past October, 13 Chinese were shot and killed while sitting in two small boats full of methamphetamine." Meanwhile Naw Kham has been arrested and waits in a prison in China for his trial.

Lauren Hilgers adds: "Border casinos are attractive to Chinese investors for two reasons — they fill a huge demand for gambling and they facilitate the process of getting money out of the mainland." And then she writes: "Zhao insists his intentions in Laos are good. His goal, he says, is to be here for a long time. But it is hard to see how he will do it without at least reaching an agreement with local drug runners."

Vice president of Kings Romans Group is Wenxin Zheng. He assured Lauren Hilgers "that there is no drinking or prostitution in the casino, but on the north side of the hotel I spot a shabby pink building with a row of dubious-looking massage parlors on the ground floor, and on the second level a bar whose windows have been blacked out by giant posters of pole-dancing ladies. A tall woman in short shorts stands outside one of the storefronts, sipping a Coke."

If you are foreigner and visiting Thailand it is not so easy to go to the casino. You are now allowed to exit or enter Thailand at Sop Ruak and exit/enter Laos at the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone. Here you need a Lao visum (30 days for 30 to 35 US-dollars.

Update on April 19 in 2014:

A chinatown market has been opened in August 2013 with 70 restaurants and shops. There are doubts, where the money for all the investments is coming from. Thai businessman Pattana Sittisombat, president of the Committee for the Economic Quadrangle, said: “I am absolutely concerned about the possibility that illicit funds could be attracted to this project, and that it could provide opportunities for money laundering.” (according to rfa.org).

And there is another development: "Between Houay Xai and the Kings Romans casino, about 4,000 hectares of rice paddy fields have been transformed over the past two years into banana plantations", reports asia.nikkei.com. Chinese investors have leased the land from farmers. "The move has radically changed local lifestyles: the farmer-landlords earn 30,000-40,000 baht ($1,000 to $1,300) in rent per year, plus around 200 baht a day if they work on the banana plantations."

Meanwhile Lao farmers are protesting against the Airport project of King Romans Group. The group originally wanted to take 236 hectares (583 acres) from 46 farmer families in six villages in return for compensation well below market value, but lately the developer announced plans to extend the area required for the project by an additional six hectares (15 acres), as rfa.org reports. The farmers on April 3 prevented King Romans officials from measuring out the new parcel of land under the protection of armed guards. The plans for the international airport project affect the villages of Phonehom, Donmoun, Phiengyam, Mokkachok, Khouan and Sibouheung.


Update January 31, 2018

The U.S. Treasury Department has slapped sanctions on casino owner Zhao Wei and three other individuals which it said was involved in drug, human and wildlife trafficking and child prostitution. Read press release and who is under sancions. Operating via the King Romans Casino, the Zhao Wei network allowed the storage and distribution of heroin and other narcotics, the statement said according to Reuters. “The Zhao Wei crime network engages in an array of horrendous illicit activities, including human trafficking and child prostitution, drug trafficking and wildlife traffick­ing,” said Sigal Mandelker, US Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence according to South China Morning Post. According to US officials Zhao Wei has connections with Wa State Army in Myanmar. In a statement released to newspapers in Laos and China, Zhao hit back. “As an investor, all of my own activities and those of my staff and companies in all countries and areas are legal, ordi­nary business operations supervised by the legal authorities of the relevant countries that have not harmed the interests of any country or individual.”

South China Morning Post Magazine travelled to the casino and found that an array of illegal wildlife products were being sold openly. "Slabs of rhino horn and pieces of ivory were available at stalls inside the entrance of the Blue Shield Casino. In the nearby shopping area, outlets were selling elephant skin and rhino horn for 200 yuan (HK$250) a gram. On a shabby farm masquerading as a zoo next to the Mekong River, 25 tigers and 28 bears were being kept in small cages", wrote South China Morning Post.


Update August 2018
Around King Roman Casino a new town with highrise buildings has been built, as you can see at the end of this video on youtube. In 2018 LianShing 聯盛 Group celebrated the opening of a Vip room in Blue Shield Casino.


Read also:
Gambling a Foreign Hand
Busted flash: How Golden City in Boten, at the Lao/China border, was shut down
Dams, Casinos and Concessions - Rising Powers. Chinese Megaprojects in Laos
Little, landlocked Laos: Pawn or pivot in Asia’s future?

Golden Boten City has been closed down - will it wake up again with help from China?

Picture by sama sama - massa
Chinese shops along the road in Boten

In Oudomxay province, a mountainous region south of the Chinese border in northern Laos you can see the effects of foreign investment by Chinese business in Laos, notes chinadialogue.net. In 2002, the Lao government earmarked the region for development including hotels, casinos and commercial centres. Sitting on the Chinese border next to Route 3, the town of Boten (磨丁市) was designated a Special Economic Zone. And the big plans led to a big name: "Boten Golden City". The 21 square kilometers on which the town sits have been leased for 30 years by a Hong Kong-registered company, led by Wong Man Suen, with an option to extend this lease by another 60 years, as Asia Times Online noted. The main road, was paved. Chinese workers poured into the Boten Special Economic Zone as construction sites and towering hotels sprang up amid the verdant hills. Dominating the landscape of Boten is the 271-room Royal Jinlun hotel and casino complex, and there were Chinese restaurants, cell-phone outlets, duty free shops and stalls selling cheap Chinese products. It was illegal for Laotians to gamble, in was also illegal for Chinese in China, but Chinese could simply walk across the border without a visa. The town worked on Beijing time, accepted only Chinese currency and spoke only Mandarin Chinese. Electricity and telephone lines ran from China, and electric sockets adhered to Chinese standards. The growing numbers of prostitutes that patrolled the streets were all Chinese, as were the beer and the cigarettes (see pictures by Midnitemapper).

But in April 2011 the casino was shut down after Chinese authorities had urged their neighbors in Laos to do so. This after media reports that Chinese gamblers were held hostage in Boten for unpaid debts. Most shop and restaurant owners then packed up and left, the same did a Thai transvestite show and the Chinese prostitutes. "The enclave’s economy seems to have collapsed just as the builders hit their stride with a new high-rise hotel and a shopping centre bristling with columns in the classical style", reports Lone Rider. Ron Gluckman wrote in Forbes Asia Magazine that the owners of Golden Boten City were looking out for new investors.

In March 2012 Vientiane Times reported that an unnamed Chinese investor had taken over and that Golden Boten City would become a casino-free zone and that the Lao goverment changed the area from a Special Economic Zone to a Specific Economic Zone. The move gives the Luang Namtha provincial administration greater power to control social and security issues. Officials said the new investor wanted to transform Boten Golden City into a tourism destination showcasing the Lue culture. The Lue ethnic group lives along the Lao, Thai and Chinese borders. The investor is said to have put the Lue culture on stage in Xishuangbana in Yunnan province (China) and in Chiang Mai province of Thailand.

In April 2012 came the news, that the Lao government signed a new agreement with Yunnan Hai Cheng Industrial Group Stock Co. and - surprisingly - again Wong Man Suen’s Hong Kong Fuk Hing Travel Entertainment Group. The investors are said to invest 500 Millions US-Dollars.

But until now not much has changed in Boten. Jack Kurtz, a photojournalist based in Bangkok, travelled to Oudomxay last month to document the effect of China’s investment on the landscape and local people. He found sparkling new shopping centres empty of customers – the goods are too expensive for the local people – and a landscape dotted with cranes, construction and trucks. The development, particularly the paving of the road, has transformed life for many in the province, drawing people down from homes in the mountains to earn a living from tourists or truck drivers who frequent the road. See Jack Kurtz about Oudomxay.

Picture by Prince Roy
The Royal Hotel in Boten