Chinese investors have set up a sprawling casino complex at Boten, Laos. At Boten yuan is the required currency of settlement
These special concessions are quid pro quo for the official aid, grants and non-interest loans Beijing has given in recent years to Laos.
Chinese foreign investments sometimes come with strings attached, including unskilled Chinese. China has made its deepest investment inroads in states governed by authoritarian regimes: Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.
In a 2008 academic paper, Martin Stuart-Fox, a renowned Laos expert, argued that China expects three things in return for its aid: backing for Chinese policy; access for Chinese companies; and lines of communication though Laos to Thailand.
OnLine Asia Times reports that as of 2007, the Lao government said there were 30,000 Chinese residents living in Laos which Stuart-Fox described as a ‘gross underestimate’ in his research. Nonetheless it represented a tripling of the 1997 estimated figure.
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