By Kalinga Seneviratne
SINGAPORE (IDN) – While China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been in the news for a while – thanks mainly to negative reporting by the western media – Japan is slowly funding the building of supplementary trade corridors in the Mekong region projecting itself as not only interested in building infrastructure, but also trade facilitation through human capacity building in the region.
With a growth rate exceeding 5 percent and a combined population of over 240 million, the Mekong region, which was devastated by the Vietnam war in the 1960s and 1970s, has now emerged as a new growth centre of Asia. With the exception of Thailand, the population of the region – that also includes Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam – is young, with more than 20 per cent of residents below 15 years of age.