Report: China's Participation in Greater Mekong Subregion Cooperation

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9. Trade and Investment

China has actively participated in and forcefully promoted the development of the GMS economic corridors, worked hard to raise the trade facilitation level in this subregion, and encouraged the active participation of the business community. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao put forward the proposal on a "GMS Economic Corridor Forum" at the third GMS summit in March 2008, which has won the support of all the parties. In the same year, China successfully hosted the first round of the forum in Yunnan, which issued a joint ministerial statement entitled the Kunming Consensus and adopted such outcome documents as the Scope of the Functions of the GMS Economic Corridor Forum and the Strategic Plan of Action for the North-South Economic Corridor. The forum has provided an institutional guarantee to the gradual expansion of the focus of such cooperation from transportation to trade and investment to achieve real economic corridor. At the same time, it has tried to meet the needs of local governments and enterprises to take part in GMS cooperation. In June 2009, China held the GMS Economic Corridor Week in Yunnan for the purpose of promoting the logistics in the economic corridor and increasing subregional trade flow. In June 2010, China held the GMS Investment and Project Promotion Conference in Yunnan and organized interactions between Chinese enterprises and enterprises of the other GMS countries for project cooperation.

In addition, the Chinese government has earnestly implemented the Action Framework for the GMS Strategy of Facilitation of Trade and Investment. It has set up port information platforms and taken six facilitation measures including 24-hour customs clearance appointment services at all ports to increase customs clearance efficiency. It has improved the visa policy, simplified the visa procedures, and set up visa offices at the border ports in Yunnan and Guangxi, so as to provide facilitation to businessmen from the other GMS countries. In order to implement the CBTA at the designated China-Vietnam, China-Laos, and China-Laos-Thailand border ports, the General Administration of Customs of China has actively participated in the negotiations on transit customs supervision and law enforcement, thus laying a legal foundation for transportation and trade facilitation at these ports.

10. Drug Prohibition and Crop Substitution

Over the years, under the GMS Narcotic Drug Control Mechanism (MOU) and bilateral memorandums of understanding and agreements on narcotic drug control, China has engaged in multilateral and bilateral drug prohibition cooperation with the other GMS countries. Through mutual visits, annual meetings on bilateral cooperation on drug prohibition, joint law enforcement, provision of training for drug control personnel (accumulatively holding 24 sessions and training 740 persons from Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia) and assistance in kind, China has intensified cooperation with the other GMS countries in drug prohibition and made positive contribution to improving the drug abuse situation, maintaining social stability, and improving people' s lives in GMS countries.

In recent years, China has vigorously pursued the strategy of "Eliminating Drug Sources from Outside the Borders" , and by allowing the import of the products of crop substitution and providing special funding, encouraged and supported domestic enterprises to undertake poppy crop substitution and develop substitute industries in Myanmar and Laos. By 2010, more than 180 Chinese enterprises had engaged in poppy crop substitution in Myanmar and Laos, with an accumulative farming area of 210,000 hectares (120,000 hectares in Myanmar and 90,000 hectares in Laos) and involving 47 substitute crops, including rubber, sugar cane, rice, corn, and fruits. The crop substitution projects have created jobs for local residents, encouraged a lot of opium farmers to abandon poppy planting, and effectively elevated the living standards of local people. Chinese enterprises engaging in crop substitution have also built roads, bridges and canals in northern Myanmar and Laos, and thus contributed to the improvement of local infrastructure.

11. Science and Technology

The Chinese government has attached much importance to science and technology exchanges and cooperation under the GMS framework. For many years, in line with the multilateral and bilateral agreements and memorandums of understanding between GMS countries on science and technology cooperation, and in light of the needs of various GMS countries, China has further advanced and enhanced bilateral and multilateral cooperation with the other GMS countries in this field, by jointly conducting science and technology exchange projects, holding training programs, hosting academic seminars, and donating research equipment. Since 2008, under bilateral cooperation frameworks, the Chinese science and technology authority has cooperated with its Thai and Vietnamese counterparts to support and implement 37 short-term exchange projects and 36 long-term cooperative research programs. From 2008 to 2010, China held annual science and technology training programs for the other GMS countries. A total of 368 trainees participated in 81 courses on such subjects as agriculture, resources and the environment, information technology, biomedicine, engineering and machinery manufacturing. Besides, China' s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) has provided annual training for the science and technology administrative officials of its Vietnamese counterpart. Between 2008 and 2011, a total of 113 science and technology officials from the local and central governments of Vietnam received such training. In the past three years, the MOST has held three annual science and technology seminars of GMS countries to exchange experience in technology transfer and the formulation of science and technology polices and strategies. In 2009, China donated 500,000 RMB yuan worth of research equipment to Myanmar to support local scientific and technological development.