"Cash from rubber comes at the cost of Laos’ forests", Mekong Eye, 8 December 2025

While rubber has lifted many out of poverty in northern Laos, contract farming schemes, though generating income for many farmers, have left many locals vulnerable and dependent on the industry.

Yunnan State Farms Group, one of the most prominent Chinese province-level state-owned enterprises, arrived in northern Laos in 2002 and has remained active since then. It supplies rubber to domestic and international tire manufacturers such as Giti, Hankook, Maxxis and Kunlun, according to a Chinese state media report.

Mekong Eye’s interview with residents found villagers often signed opaque contracts without fully understanding the terms.

Lao farmers have also lost control of their land due to debt accumulated before latex harvests.

Many farmers are also ineligible to sign a direct contract with the company. [...].

Yunnan State Farms Group did not respond to Mekong Eye’s inquiries about its policy on ethical and responsible rubber production.

[...] via Singapore subsidiary R1 International, China Hainan Rubber Industry Group — which supplies tire factories across China and beyond — is a major buyer of rubber sourced from Vietnamese companies that procure their supplies from Laos.

Guizhou Tyre Viet Nam [...] buys from Liên Anh, a major partner of many Vietnamese companies, including the state-owned Viet Nam Rubber Group [...]. Guizhou Tyre’s products primarily go to China, Russia, the U.S. and Brazil.

Guizhou Tyre China also sources from [...] Đức Hiền Quảng Trị, which buys from a network of middlemen and smallholder farmers scattered across central Laos and Cambodia.

Mekong Eye contacted the companies named above via the email addresses listed on their websites, but did not receive a response by press time.

In Thateng district in Sekong province, a village lost 5,000 hectares of farmland and forest to a concession [...].

This was the home of the Indigenous Katu people, who had been forced to relocate once under a government resettlement policy to end slash-and-burn farming.

The company moved in and banned villagers from grazing livestock on land they used to own, [...]. Those who resisted were arrested and forced to pledge an end to protesting.

VRG and LVF did not respond to Mekong Eye’s inquiries about their policy to ensure traceability and community engagement.