Southeast Asia’s new best friend – Los Angeles Times
THE MAPS SPREAD ACROSS the desk of senior Thai trade official Pisanu Rienmahasarn show an important piece of Southeast Asia’s future: a highway that, when it opens next year, will run more than 1,000 miles from Kunming in southwestern China, through Laos, to the ports of southern Thailand and beyond.
Beijing’s diplomatic message to Asia is fundamentally reassuring: Let’s get rich together. China’s modernization can only succeed if its neighbors also grow prosperous. That’s a far cry from the ideological clashes of a generation ago, when from behind its bamboo curtain, China bankrolled leftist groups to foment revolution in the capitalist Asian nations.