Cashing In across the Golden Triangle: Thailand's Northern Border Trade with China, Laos, and Myanmar

Historically, the Golden Triangle on the Mekong River has been a strategic yet largely impoverished crossroads between This book considers the new transnational "economic corridors" connecting northern Thailand and southwestern 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.

"The corner of the region known as the Golden Triangle remains bound to well-worn images of lawless Cold War-era drug trafficking, rather than evoking images of the complex and varied lives of the region's inhabitants today. This timely and detailed study provides an important corrective to static and dated images of Northern Thailand, Burma, and Laos. Like other places in the world, the Golden Triangle is in the process of being deeply transformed, and Cashing In ably tracks many of the changes." -Jim Glassman, University of British Columbia

Thein Swe teaches economics, finance, and globalization at Payap University. Paul Chambers is research director at the South East Asian Institute of Global Studies, Payap University.