Recently, Mae Sai became a very well-known town for all tourists about crossing the border for shopping, and to frankly say there is only a few people to go to border for enjoying the border town and plural cultures scenery. Only a few numbers of tourists passing through Mae Sai and Tachilek in order to go to visit Chiang Tung or Kengtung (in Burmese), the principal town of Kengtung Township.
Since China’s ‘open-door policy’ opens the country to foreign investment and encourages development of a market economy and private sector (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1288392.stm), and joined the World Trade Organization in December 2001, China has expanded their product market more and more and impacted the global economy and also concerned the Western country as the United States in term of a patent or an intellectual property right a great deal.
While Thai government has closely historical relationship with the US government, the intention to negotiate the US-Thailand Free Trade Agreement has been going for over six years without any success. As the result of negotiations have attracted strong opposition and concern among many Thai social movements, farmers to people with HIV/AIDS. (http://www.bilaterals.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=19) that concern about intellectual rights would affect the right to access medicine.
Today if you go to watch the movie in the theatre, you will see Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva talks to the Thai people that buying illegal movie DVDs or online downloading are serious crime, and ruin a reputation of Thailand. The anti-pirate DVDs campaign often occurs in the radio and television as well. Still, the border trade and economy in Mae Sai and Tachilek are blooming and seemingly going well. There are hundreds thousand tourists visiting the border a year. Many people buy the imitation brand product which is cheaper, more affordable, looking nice, and feeling like they can enjoy the modernity as like as the rich people.At this point, I think the border trade bloom at Mae Sai and Tachileck towns that because of classes and modernity value as well.
In conclusion, we can see and much agree that urbanization are from the economic development and trade growth, and its system has both evolved organically by the human needs, and plus modernity values. Also it needs some certain kinds of governmental and trans-governmental management and regulations, and the last one it is the global economy trend of labour, and that can be explained by the economic growth in China, where there are lots of informal employment which contributes about half of total urban employment and trends to rise even more. One more point is that how interesting it is to look about informal economy, dynamics of social struggles and political bargaining, when we look at the relationship between China, the United States and Thailand.
While Thai government tries to promote anti-pirate or illegal products, and attempts to resume negotiating FTA with the US, Thai government closes the eyes at the border town and takes benefit from shoppers, tourists, traders, and other economic activities. At the same time that we all are able to enjoy the variety of movies and music in the American or Western culture contexts from all cheap DVDs and CDs which are produced in China. Things that illegal in Thailand, but you can cross the border and buy in Burma, then you can carry through back to Thailand with no charge.
The US economically sanctions Burmese junta that abuses human rights in the country, on the other side Burmese economy is still growing with lot of investment and financial support from Thailand, Singapore and China. Moreover, the world aims to blaming China’s developmental project and economic growth on resources extraction, but we are happy to consume the cheap goods from China. What a contradiction we have been living in. What a question that we are laying on, and I am not sure whether we have a solid answer for that.
(Thai translation at http://blogazine.prachatai.com/user/headline/post/3055)
No comments:
Post a Comment