ABSTRACT
Laos is located centrally in the former Indo-China. It is a landlocked state which has boundaries with China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar. Laos is thus central in what has been one of the least stable regions since World War II. The country is mainly mountainous, but there is a sharp division between the uplands and the lowlands of the Mekong River, where some 40 per cent of the population lives. The remaining 60 per cent are classified into mountainside Lao, tribal Lao and mountaintop Lao. Laos is one of the world's poorest countries. The Lao Peoples Democratic Republic (LPDR) was proclaimed on 2 December 1975 as an orthodox Marxist-Leninist state, run by the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party (LPRP). While there have been changes, the party remains overtly devoted to the proletariat, but covertly the key to success has been ethnicity rather than class or ideology.
