The Law Enforcement Cooperation Along The Mekong River Among China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand And Its Influence

This study proposes new strategic thinking on developing non-traditional security cooperation in the Mekong River Basin. Through the lens of public goods theory, it reviews the development of law enforcement cooperation along the Mekong River between China, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand.Mekong River Basin has long been an interest of great powers. Since 1994, China increasingly played a major role in transnational cooperation, and as the subregion’s geostrategic importance becomes more salient, the United States, India, Korea, and Japan have also sought to increase their influence there. In 2001, China, Myanmar, Thailand and Laos signed the Upper Mekong Navigation Agreement, enabling rapid development of trading and tourism on the river. However, crime is worsening, especially in the "Golden Triangle"-also known as the "Drug Triangle"-where a lack of security and enforcement mechanisms have led to the emergence of transnational issues including human trafficking, smuggling, illegal drugs, armed insurgents among others. The Mekong River Massacre on October 5,2011 drew world attention, and only two months after the incident, joint patrol cooperation between the 4 relevant countries started its operations. However, cooperation is still in the preliminary stage, and the need to institutionalize a more complete, normalized, and diversified international cooperation mechanism remains.The deepening multilateral cooperation must be created under benefit of each cooperate parties and high mutual trust between participating countries. As a regional great power, China should therefore contribute more to the security cooperation. In addition, during the international security cooperation process, China has to focus on some constraints. China should keep its mind open and respect the decision of each country, form the management system along to the willing of each party through negotiation. Thailand is the country that has potential to become a leading player to push forward the security cooperation, since the first joint patrol carry out, Thailand maintained cooperation with other countries. But Thailand still has room to increase its contribution and share more of the burden with China. Effective development of regional public goods critically depends on all parties involved, thus Myanmar and Laos’ economic backwardness is a constrain on the formation of long-term, comprehensive international joint law enforcement mechanisms which require considerable capital investment. If benefits to Myanmar and Laos do not outweigh the cost to them in relative terms, their participation cannot be assured. In order to expand the security cooperation field, each participating countries must also improve an internal cooperation ability between government agencies, including establish some specialized agency or professional team to undertake a variety of non-traditional security issues. At the same time, the four participants also need to pay attention to extraterritorial countries that enter to the region for creating impact in order to restrain China’s influence.