Chinese tourism and the Asian invasion in Laos

VIENTIANE - Sythat nervously eyes shelves packed with bright silk scarves and carved wooden elephants, wondering what an impending influx of Chinese tourists to the sleepy Laos capital will make of her little handicraft shop.

"I don't think they'll want to buy any of this," she said, folding the silk cushion covers she sells mainly to Europeans for about US$5 ($7.80).

"The Chinese will not spend as much and will make too much noise. It will be difficult when they come."

But there is evidence to the contrary in many places where Chinese tourism has increased. Tourists from the rest of China have been a big factor in Hong Kong's economic recovery.

Almost anywhere else in the world, the arrival of newly rich Chinese eager to leave their nation for possibly the first time is greeted with anticipation.

But in poverty-stricken Laos, where a quarter of the population lives on less than US$1 a day, it is being awaited with a sense of foreboding.

Last month, China and Laos signed a deal which will more than double the number of Chinese visitors to about 200,000 a year - a quarter of all tourists in 2004. Tourism is important in Laos, earning it US$124 million in 2004, a large amount by its standards.

However, relations between indigenous inhabitants of southeast Asia and ethnic Chinese communities have often been tense in the past.

Hundreds of ethnic Chinese were killed in riots following the downfall of Indonesian strongman Suharto in 1998 as protesters made the Chinese scapegoats for the country's economic woes.

That has meant that the arrival of Chinese tourists - one million of whom are expected to go to Thailand alone this year - has not always gone down smoothly in the region.

Stories of badly behaved Chinese tourists often appear in Southeast Asian and even mainland newspapers, complaining of everything from passengers refusing to get off aircraft in protest at delays to littering.

In 2002, even Chinese newspapers buzzed with talk of the "Seven Deadly Sins of Chinese Tourists", saying they were dirty, noisy, coarse and rude. They pointed out that in Thailand some signs asking people not to spit were written only in Chinese.

"We've heard about these Chinese in Thailand and I don't think such behaviour will go down well here," said barber Nelamith Daongam, 34, sipping Thai whiskey under a papaya tree in Vientiane's Chinatown.

In Laos' laid-back capital, where the number of cash machines can be counted on the fingers of one hand and where the clocks seem permanently stuck on 1975 - the year of the Pathet Lao Communist takeover - signs in the simplified Chinese used in mainland China are gradually going up.

In the two short unpaved streets of Chinatown that script is replacing the traditional characters used by overseas Chinese communities.

"More and more Chinese are coming here," said Liao Peiyuan, who came to Vientiane from the southwestern Chinese region of Guangxi a year ago to work in a shop. "Hopefully it will liven up this boring place."

Just 200,000 people live in Vientiane, a city of temples and decaying French colonial villas perched on the banks of the Mekong River.

That has caused some Lao to fear the country could be swamped by its giant neighbour, with which it shares a border. A new road will eventually link China with Thailand via Laos.

"With the road, of course the Chinese influence will increase," said a Laos-based Western diplomat. "In parts of northern Laos, more Chinese is spoken than anything else already."

For the Chinese already in Laos, the country looks ripe for the picking.

"There's so much space in this country," said Huang, a Beijing-born cook at a Vientiane hotel. "Once more Chinese come, we'll show them what development means."

An asian enigma

Laos is wedged between China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar.

Its 5.8 million population is mainly Buddhist.

Independence was restored with French withdrawal in 1953.

Pathet Lao replaced the monarchy with a Communist Government in 1975.

Laos remains one of the poorest Asian nations, with many of its citizens living on US$1 per day.

- REUTERS