From about 2005-2008 I used to live and own a house on the Laos and Burma borders of far south-western China and still often travel in the area. Laos is simply poor, being a landlocked mountainous country with minimal infrastructure or education surrounded by larger and more powerful neighbors. In the last 16 years, Laos has begun to get some better roads (largely with foreign investment), mobile telecommunications, a larger tourist industry, some dams and a great deal more rubber plantations. Otherwise, it is still a sleepy, mountainous, jungled backwater.
China has committed to building infrastructure to connect Laos and Thailand to Chinese rail and road networks. Relatively tiny Vietnam apparently made an expensive and partly abortive attempt to sponsor a road from Dien Bien Phu to Udomxai in the north, perhaps in a bid to counter growing Chinese influence, but China ran rings around them and the strategic significance or benefit of such a road is now negligible.
From an economic rationalist perspective, I think China just wants more markets. If you were a massive manufacturer with 14(?) land borders and awesome infrastructure expertise, you'd be building infrastructure to connect new markets too. I don't think there's any kind of evil Beijing geostrategic scheme at play here ... there's very little to gain by controlling Laos (which economically China already does in the north of the country) ... it just makes sense.
There are repercussions of China's aggressive market hunting. Taking an example of Northern Laos, the Chinese have been buying farmlands and converting them into Banana farms. Lots of farmers have sold their land for good money. If you don't sell you land, you'll be a fool because a) the size of land isn't that big so you are dependent on your neighbours good will for letting the water flow into your patch b) the neighbours already sold their's to the Chinese. The Chinese also very cleverly opened a casino. So, now you have villages full of farmers who go to the casino and gamble the money back to the same people (because as the saying goes, the house always wins) who bought their lands. Lao women who used to work in their farms now work in these casinos. Drug abuse has always been a problem in Laos but with this inflow of cash, it has been exacerbated.
One might say, the Lao government is equally responsible - which is not entirely false. If a chinese company tried to buy an Indian farmer's land, there would be outrage but Laos is a tiny country so no real comparison. Anyway, the net result is a social impact that is far from the carrot of "economic growth".
{{citation-needed}} but perhaps. In my observation land has predominantly been used for rubber plantations rather than bananas. However, the rubber price crashed in recent years so a lot of the profits never materialized, maybe they are switching. Also, there are vast tracts (literally mountain after mountain as far as the eye can see of monoculture) of bananas inside of China (particularly in Wenshan prefecture, close to Vietnam), so on the fact of it it makes little sense to import them over bad roads from bad infrastructure regions in Laos.
China has committed to building infrastructure to connect Laos and Thailand to Chinese rail and road networks. Relatively tiny Vietnam apparently made an expensive and partly abortive attempt to sponsor a road from Dien Bien Phu to Udomxai in the north, perhaps in a bid to counter growing Chinese influence, but China ran rings around them and the strategic significance or benefit of such a road is now negligible.
From an economic rationalist perspective, I think China just wants more markets. If you were a massive manufacturer with 14(?) land borders and awesome infrastructure expertise, you'd be building infrastructure to connect new markets too. I don't think there's any kind of evil Beijing geostrategic scheme at play here ... there's very little to gain by controlling Laos (which economically China already does in the north of the country) ... it just makes sense.
Some images of the northern Laos road to Dien Bien Phu in 2012 (dunno if this new non-Picasa Google Photo link works) @ https://get.google.com/albumarchive/106883718971909092529/al... or https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipOJtgKiJZdgruRyZhNTUk2b...