The Mekong River

By Edward Wong for The NYT

BEIJING — Chinese border guards began joint patrols Saturday on the Mekong River with counterparts from Laos, Myanmar and Thailand, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. The effort is a significant step by China toward playing a larger role in regional security.

The joint patrols came about after an Oct. 5 attack on two Chinese cargo ships resulted in the deaths of 13 sailors. Photographs taken of the sailors’ bodies after recovery were circulated on the Internet and aroused anger among some Chinese. At least some of the sailors had had their hands tied and mouths gagged before being executed; others had been blindfolded with tape.

Two weeks after the attack, the four countries agreed to start joint river patrols, Xinhua reported. The headquarters for the initiative, in Xishuangbanna, a tropical region in the far south of Yunnan Province, opened Friday, and the first patrols, escorting 10 cargo ships into Southeast Asia, left from the town of Guanlei after a ceremony Saturday.

Their departure also marked the resumption of international shipping on the Mekong, which had been halted after the Oct. 5 attack. The attack took place within the so-called Golden Triangle, a border area infamous for drug smuggling.

Nine Thai soldiers belonging to an antidrug task force turned themselves in in late October after the Thai police issued arrest warrants, according to reports in the Thai news media. One report cited Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yubamrung as saying that “solid evidence” suggested the weapons used to attack the Chinese ships, the Huaping and Yu Xing 8, were fired from within the Thai border.

China has selected 200 officers from its larger border patrol force to take part in the river patrols. Photographs and video footage of the unit at Guanlei showed rows of men in black uniforms, helmets and orange life jackets standing at attention and clutching automatic rifles. The men appeared to be using small speedboats with six seats each and Yamaha engines; one larger boat had a mounted machine gun.

The Mekong, an important avenue for shipping that is known as the Lancang in Chinese, runs for more than 3,000 miles, starting on the Tibetan plateau and flowing down to Yunnan Province before passing through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. It empties from the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam into the South China Sea.

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