China’s Spring City as the One Belt One Road Gateway to Southeast Asia
The last time I visited Yunnan, in 2009, it was a significantly under-developed region, suffering from intense drought and the effects of a bizarre Pu’er tea speculative mania and subsequent collapse in tea prices. I was seeking an understanding of the area’s economic and social development, visiting its well-known places such as Kunming, Dali and Lijiang, and many other small villages, as I traveled by bus over bumpy roads and frightening mountain passes. A number of places I visited weren’t even electrified at the time, and many of the rural people I met on my travels throughout the province seemed to have been left behind from the prosperity of China’s east.
Today, Yunnan is one of the richest agricultural areas of China, supplying a large proportion of the world’s fresh cut flowers, as well as significant volumes of fruits, tobacco, and other crops. The traditional Pu’er tea region has been supplemented and diversified to include high-quality coffee bean production used by global companies such as Starbucks, which built plantations there and helped modernize agricultural practices for the predominantly ethnic minority farmers.
Far from being energy deficient, the region has become a hydro-electric leader in China and globally with major dams, added large solar farms to take advantage of Yunnan’s clear skies and high annual sun exposure, and just opened an oil pipeline through Myanmar, shortening the distance oil previously had to travel by sea.