The Asian Triangle

The Golden Triangle region that joins Burma, Thailand, and Laos is one of the global centers of opiate and methamphetamine production. Opportunistic Chinese businessmen and leaders of various armed groups are largely responsible for the manufacture of these drugs. The region is defined by the apparently conflicting parallel strands of criminality and efforts at state building, a tension embodied by a group of individuals who are simultaneously local political leaders, drug entrepreneurs, and members of heavily armed militias.Ko-lin Chin, a Chinese American criminologist who was born and raised in Burma, conducted five hundred face-to-face interviews with poppy growers, drug dealers, drug users, armed group leaders, law-enforcement authorities, and other key informants in Burma, Thailand, and China. The Golden Triangle provides a lively portrait of a region in constant transition, a place where political development is intimately linked to the vagaries of the global market in illicit drugs.Chin explains the nature of opium growing, heroin and methamphetamine production, drug sales, and drug use. He also shows how government officials who live in these areas view themselves not as drug kingpins, but as people who are carrying the responsibility for local economic development on their shoulders.

Taking a long view of the three-party relationship, and its future prospects In this Asian century, scholars, officials and journalists are increasingly focused on the fate of the rivalry between China and India. They see the U.S. relationships with the two Asian giants as now intertwined, after having followed separate paths during the Cold War. In Fateful Triangle, Tanvi Madan argues that China's influence on the U.S.-India relationship is neither a recent nor a momentary phenomenon. Drawing on documents from India and the United States, she shows that American and Indian perceptions of and policy toward China significantly shaped U.S.-India relations in three crucial decades, from 1949 to 1979. Fateful Triangle updates our understanding of the diplomatic history of U.S.-India relations, highlighting China's central role in it, reassesses the origins and practice of Indian foreign policy and nonalignment, and provides historical context for the interactions between the three countries. Madan's assessment of this formative period in the triangular relationship is of more than historic interest. A key question today is whether the United States and India can, or should develop ever-closer ties as a way of countering China's desire to be the dominant power in the broader Asian region. Fateful Triangle argues that history shows such a partnership is neither inevitable nor impossible. A desire to offset China brought the two countries closer together in the past, and could do so again. A look to history, however, also shows that shared perceptions of an external threat from China are necessary, but insufficient, to bring India and the United States into a close and sustained alignment: that requires agreement on the nature and urgency of the threat, as well as how to approach the threat strategically, economically, and ideologically. With its long view, Fateful Triangle offers insights for both present and future policymakers as they tackle a fateful, and evolving, triangle that has regional and global implications.

Historically, the Golden Triangle on the Mekong River has been a strategic yet largely impoverished crossroads between China, Laos, Thailand and Burma. This book considers the new transnational "economic corridors" connecting northern Thailand and south-western China via key border towns in Myanmar and Laos. Improved highways and ports have transformed towns and districts, bringing an influx of Chinese investment, tourism, and population movements.

During the latter half of the twentieth century the little-known and often lawless region where Laos, Burma, Thailand and China meet has become known and widely romanticised as 'The Golden Triangle'. Originally a Western designation applied to the region because of its wealth in jade, silver, rubies, lumber, rare animal products and, above all, opium, the name has stuck and is today accepted both in Chinese and in Thai.By reputation, by very definition, the area is off the beaten track. The home of drug warlords, arms dealers, insurgent armies, latter-day slave traders and plain, old-fashioned bandits, it is also the home of an extraordinarily wide range of colourful ethnic minorities, many still only partly known and understood, and a veritable Tower of Babel linguistically.36,500 words, 70 historical images, 46 contemporary images, 5 maps, Bibliography

The Chinese triangle of mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan constitutes one of the most dynamic regions in the world economy. Since the late 1970s, these three societies have experienced increasing economic integration; however, studies aimed at analyzing and explaining this integration have often overlooked the very important role social institutions have played in the shaping of this process. To fill this gap, this book adopts a systematic institutional approach designed to examine the different patterns of institutions in the three countries and to discuss how such social institutions as the economy, gender, social networks, and the Chinese diaspora have exerted a profound impact on all three societies. The chapters, taken together, argue that different patterns of institutional configuration have led to divergent paths of development, and that this divergence will have significant implications on the prospects for Chinese national reunification in the twenty-first century. The Introductory chapter provides a historical discussion on the origins and the transformation of the Chinese triangle during the second half of the twentieth century. The remainder of the volume is broken into four topics considered crucial for understanding the transformation of the Chinese triangle: economic transformation, gender, social networks, and the Chinese diaspora. As globalization impacts the Chinese triangle, studies that consider the issues from the perspective of social institutions will be increasingly important to understanding the area as it develops in the world economy.

A collaborative effort by scholars from the United States, China, and Japan, this volume focuses on the period 1972–1989, during which all three countries, brought together by a shared geopolitical strategy, established mutual relations with one another despite differences in their histories, values, and perceptions of their own national interest. Although each initially conceived of its political and security relations with the others in bilateral terms, the three in fact came to form an economic and political triangle during the 1970s and 1980s. But this triangle is a strange one whose dynamics are constantly changing. Its corners (the three countries) and its sides (the three bilateral relationships) are unequal, while its overall nature (the capacity of the three to work together) has varied considerably as the economic and strategic positions of the three have changed and post–Cold War tensions and uncertainties have emerged.

The incredible story of how Chiang Kai-shek's defeated army came to dominate the Asian drug trade After their defeat in China's civil war, remnants of Chiang Kai-shek's armies took refuge in Burma before being driven into Thailand and Laos. Based on recently declassified government documents, The Secret Army: Chiang Kai-shek and the Drug Warlords of the Golden Triangle reveals the shocking true story of what happened after the Chinese Nationalists lost the revolution. Supported by Taiwan, the CIA, and the Thai government, this former army reinvented itself as an anti-communist mercenary force, fighting into the 1980s, before eventually becoming the drug lords who made the Golden Triangle a household name. Offering a previously unseen look inside the post-war workings of the Kuomintang army, historians Richard Gibson and Wen-hua Chen explore how this fallen military group dominated the drug trade in Southeast Asia for more than three decades. Based on recently released, previously classified government documents Draws on interviews with active participants, as well as a variety of Chinese, Thai, and Burmese written sources Includes unique insights drawn from author Richard Gibson's personal experiences with anti-narcotics trafficking efforts in the Golden Triangle A fascinating look at an untold piece of Chinese—and drug-running—history, The Secret Army offers a revealing look into the history of one of the most infamous drug cartels in Asia.