Branding tengchong: Globalization, road building, and spatial reconfigurations in Yunnan, Southwest China

Abstract

The Chinese state envisions the building of the Tengchong-Myitkyina road in Yunnan as a key element in the integration of China, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and areas beyond. Tengchong has proposed itself as a bridgehead, eschewing associations with remoteness and dead ends and embracing the region as vital to a newly imagined spatial continuum. Local authorities must negotiate and reinterpret multiple histories, invoking the Southern Silk Road and the Stilwell Road (despite its ideologically problematic role as a Nationalist fighting area), to reconfigure Tengchong, complying with the central government's narrative of Communist history, and harmonizing with road-building policy initiatives.