David on Laos

“Imagine if the 90,000 or so Laotians couldn’t have emigrated this year, nor the hundreds of thousands in previous years. Laos would be a political tinderbox. But it isn’t.”

“In the Western vernacular there’s a warning about tails wagging dogs. And [a] Buddhist adage dictates that when the sage points at the moon, only the fool looks at his finger. The point of both is not to confuse the object for the subject. For years, we’ve been warned that Laos has been ensnared in a Chinese “debt trap.’ What if Laos has equally caught Beijing in a “creditor trap?””

“Given its geography, the central party apparatus in Laos has always been unable to fully control what local officials do. Its capitalist reforms in the late 1980s also stripped socialist ideology as a common cause within Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP). In fact, the LPRP has long been less ideological than its Vietnamese counterpart. …The anti-communist diaspora is fractured and incompetent. Dissidents abroad, mainly in Thailand, are terrified of the long arm of state repression. …The LPRP’s monopoly on power and its willingness to quash any sign of a political alternative – the only thing that [a totalitarian] government needs to get right to stay in power – looks secure. Not even mounting public distress over the failing economy and declining living standards has sparked a recognizable anti-LPRP movement. Moreover, dynastic politics has become even more entrenched since Sonexay [Siphandone] became prime minister in late 2022.”