The experimental governing of mobility and trade on the China‐Laos frontier: The Tai Lue case

This paper discusses the governing of subjects and objects' mobility in the context of trans‐border rice and corn trade on the C hina‐ L aos frontier. It traces the attempts by a group of ethnic T ai L ue traders from C hina to assert themselves as ‘flexible subjects’ and economically triumphant actors on the U pper M ekong market in the era of economic regionalization. It illustrates how, between 2005 and mid‐2006, the traders' economic success relied on a variety of ‘border strategies’. ‘ B order strategies’ include a gender‐balanced organization of trade, the instrumental deployment of trans‐border ethnicity, the appropriation of a H an style of business, the opportunistic reliance on the C hinese administration's ‘regime of graduated mobility’, and the enactment of a ‘war‐machine’ against L ao state agents. Yet, in late 2006, a new wave of state authoritarianism, enmeshed in corporate accumulation processes, inhibited the traders' success. The paper suggests that, unlike what some defenders of globalization and transnational theories maintain, in the age of economic regionalization, the alleged flexibility and increased mobility of subjects and objects across the borders of the G reater M ekong S ubregion remain conditional on an unpredictable mechanism of loosening and tightening. This is part of a long‐applied governing pattern of ‘experimentation under hierarchy’ on the S ino‐ L ao frontier.