Negotiating modernity at borders: a critical analysis of Chiang Khong under Thailand’s Special Economic Development Zone policy

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Chiang Khong in 2017–2018 and a return visit in 2025, this article examines how Thailand’s Special Economic Zone (SEZ) policy has reshaped a Mekong border town through infrastructure-led development. It argues that the Chiang Khong SEZ is less a realized engine of growth than a speculative territorial project that has already altered mobility, land values and local expectations. The Fourth Thai–Lao Friendship Bridge and related logistics plans integrated Chiang Khong more tightly into regional circulation, but also diverted flows away from the town, weakened river-based tourism and associated livelihoods, and intensified land speculation. At the same time, top-down planning and weak participation generated conflict over ecologically sensitive areas, especially the Boon Rueang wetland. Local responses were not limited to resistance; residents also reworked development through conservation, agriculture and community-based tourism. The paper shows that borderland modernity in Chiang Khong is not linearly realized as progress, but unevenly negotiated through struggles over land, river, livelihood and legitimacy.