The Golden Triangle's "Special Economic Zone" (For Crime)

There is a place on earth you can go to right now where you can gamble your life savings, take your winnings and buy a bottle of wine made from tiger bones. It’s a place that smuggles heroin and meth to global sea lanes, and where you can launder your ill-gotten gains totally unabated. It’s a lawless wasteland built on foundations of suffering and greed. It exists in a legislative gap; accountable to nobody, ruled by somebody and dangerous for everybody.

The 21st century’s answer to Dodge City. Laos’ dark secret. The Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone.

The Triangle, the Businessman and the Casino

Stranded on the precipice of the Mekong River, where the three nations of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand meet, is what’s known as the Golden Triangle. So named for its infamous reputation as one of the distribution centres of the global opium trade. The Mekong feeds rivers to many countries throughout Southeast Asia and offers a useful way to take goods out to global sea lanes.

Of course this is not just limited to legal goods however, as the Mekong offers a route to the global market for illicit ones too and the Golden Triangle has been used in this way for decades. It is a perfect place for smugglers, far away from the prying eyes of government bureaucrats. On the southwestern bank of the Mekong lies Thailand, an economic powerhouse in the region backed by Western powers.

In the northwest lies Myanmar, a nation struggling with a brutal civil war, pushing some farmers to opium production to make ends meet. In the northeast lies Laos, a country economically and politically allied with China. And right in the middle of it all, in Laotian territory where all three meet is the subject of today’s story.

The Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, or GTSEZ.

This land, despite being in Laos, is not currently owned by Laos. What’s more, it is a haven of debauchery and criminality where millions of dollars are made every year through illegal means. Everything from money laundering to drug smuggling to human trafficking happens in this zone. News outlets describe the GTSEZ as a kind of wild west, a lawless wasteland where there is little accountability or oversight from governments to stop criminal misdeeds.

But how did 3,000 hectares of land end up out of the Laotian government’s hands? Why are illicit activities there allowed almost unabated? And why are all the signs in Chinese?

To answer those questions, we need to tell the story of the founder of the GTSEZ. A Chinese businessman by the name of Zhao Wei. Not an awful lot is known about his earlier life that is in English.

We know that he left school by 12 to pursue work, eventually becoming a timber trader. In the 1990s, he relocated to Macau where he entered the casino business. Macau was the gambling capital of Asia at the time and was proving highly lucrative, which likely influenced Zhao’s career choice.

It is thought that he is a veteran of the Chinese gambling industry and that he likely made his fortune running casinos in the Myanmar side of the Chinese border in a town called Mongla. This catered to Chinese tourists who were trying to get around the total ban on domestic gambling in China. In 2005, one of these casinos held several Chinese citizens for ransom owing to them not paying their gambling debts.

Amid other claims that Chinese officials had been gambling with state funds, China closed the crossing into Mongla and cut off the town’s electricity supply, killing the casino overnight. This may well have prompted Zhao’s move to Laos.

He was seemingly able to make some friends in high places there, especially in Vientiane, the nation’s capital. Good enough friends that in 2007 the Laotian government, hungry for investment, agreed to create the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone. They granted Zhao a 99-year lease on a swathe of little-developed land and effectively said “have at it”.

The land wasn’t being used for much at the time and if this successful Chinese businessman could help develop the land for nothing other than a little autonomy for a century, what was the harm? Zhao, now effectively sovereign ruler of this 3,000-hectare patch of Laos, got to work. All sorts of infrastructure were built in the zone including a six-lane-highway lined with palm trees, hotels, houses and most importantly of all, a casino.

Zhao and his company, the Kings Romans Group, also known as Dok Ngiew Kham Group, poured in hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of investment into the region, according to the Berkley Political Review. Their lease runs until the year 2106, at which point the land, now developed and full of tourists, in theory will be returned to Laos.

A byproduct of this agreement though, was the total lack of governance in the region. Zhao effectively was the leader of this little slice of the world. Laws would be written by Zhao and his associates, and a private security force would be brought in to maintain order.

It was his own little state within a state where he made all the rules. The region was granted the autonomy to police itself, with Laotian police and other forces only able to enter the GTSEZ with permission from Zhao. However, this also meant that there was very little government oversight from any of the powers in the Golden Triangle.

As such, the GTSEZ started to gain a reputation as a gamblers’ paradise. The Kings Roman casino proved popular with Chinese tourists who visited the zone and quickly started to make money for Zhao and his associates. However, we are in the Golden Triangle after all.

The lack of government oversight in the GTSEZ didn’t just make it good for Chinese gambling tourism, but for more illicit activities that criminal organisations wanted to keep away from government surveillance. Soon after the land started to be developed, the drug traffickers came, using this lawless slice of no man’s land to move materials onto the Mekong. Bloomberg reports that Zhao, as the landlord and facilitator of their illegal activities, likely gets a cut of the profits.

There was a little more oversight in the region though when China was snooping around the GTSEZ, however. Beijing was furious when an incident in 2011 saw 13 Chinese merchants, or smugglers depending on who you believe, shot and killed on the Mekong by well-known gangster Naw Kham. China decided to start sending its own gunboats down the Mekong after that to dissuade smuggling.

But there were still other ways to get things through the zone, usually in the form of bribery and corruption. Naw Kham was later captured, extradited to China and executed for his role in the crime. However, Bloomberg tells us that regional security experts have suspected since that Kham wasn’t the true culprit.

This implies that Beijing used the murdered sailors as a pretext to eliminate a troublesome criminal. Either way, Kham’s death left Zhao as the dominant player in the Golden Triangle, which he, alongside his company, have ruled to this day almost entirely uncontested.

Since then, the one major development in the GTSEZ was that the US Treasury sanctioned the Kings Romans Group and its international subsidiaries in January 2018, labelling it as a “Transnational Criminal Organisation”. Although, these sanctions have not seemed to have much effect in practice. The zone has emboldened smugglers and paramilitary groups in Myanmar which since the coup in 2021, have had control over the border regions of the country.

Stretched thin, the Burmese military has become more reliant on Border Guard Forces and other militias to contain the armed resistance, reducing its willingness and ability to constrain its allies’ illegal activities. This leaves the perfect opportunity for Zhao to step in as the middleman.

Crimes of the GTSEZ

As we’ve covered, drugs aren’t exactly a novel concept in the Golden Triangle. Corruption keeps the drug trade flowing out of the Golden Triangle and into global markets via various means. Speaking with Al-Jazeera, Jeremy Douglas, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) regional representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said that corruption is inbuilt in the drug trade, noting “In essence, what I’m describing is the chain: from source right through to export and end market involves corruption.”

Opium was a convenient cash crop for farmers in conflict-affected areas, and the opium trade helped fund the various armed groups operating in the Golden Triangle. By the 1970s, the Golden Triangle was the largest source of illicit opium in the world, before declining significantly in the 1990s as a result of opium cultivation bans and a drug market shift to methamphetamines. A large amount of opium is still grown in the triangle today.

However, UNODC rep Douglas states that this is through no great love of opium from the farmers themselves, quoting here: “I would say our understanding from the farmers – and we’ve talked to them for years and years – is that they’re ready to give up opium. They turn to opium when they don’t have other options.” What’s more is that armed militias that oversee drug production will “encourage” the farmers to keep farming opium.

Who are they to say no to these powerful people?

UNODC rep Douglas stated that efforts to combat the drug trade in the Golden Triangle and the GTSEZ simply wasn’t working. Synthetic drug production has increased since the mid-2010s, according to Al-Jazeera, with new markets for meth and other narcotics. The profitability of the drug trade in the Golden Triangle has allowed for other criminal enterprises in the zone to rapidly expand.

What’s more is that it was deliberately set up this way. According to Bloomberg, an international law enforcement official who asked not to be identified, likened the GTSEZ to a tollbooth. If traffickers moving shipments through Zhao’s area of operations fail to employ its services or pay a fee, they might find their cargoes seized by authorities who’ve received a conveniently timed tip.

Now opium is coming back into fashion in the area. The Taliban cut production of opium after coming back to power in Afghanistan. Since this is where most global opium came from, it caused heroin prices to skyrocket, enriching the Taliban in the process.

However, this has opened up the opportunity for others to undercut the Taliban with their own cheaper supply, and one such place is the Golden Triangle.

The prevalence of the drug trade has given rise to another major crime in the GTSEZ, and combined with another major vice, it creates a dangerously illegal combination. Southeast Asia has always been a gamblers’ paradise, where people from across Asia travel far and wide in order to part with their hard-earned cash. As we mentioned, gambling is illegal in China, so many of their citizens travel abroad in order to gamble.

This is how Zhao made his fortune and also why the GTSEZ gets so many Chinese visitors. The only casino in the small region is Zhao and co.’s Kings Roman Casino. Furthermore, with Zhao’s background in the Chinese gambling sector, it will not surprise you to learn that the casino was more or less the first thing built in the GTSEZ when development rights were granted in 2007.

It is undoubtable that many people, mainly Chinese tourists, travel to the zone every year in order to gamble, making the casinos staggering amounts of money hand over fist. After all, if casinos weren’t profitable, they wouldn’t be built. However, in the background, just like much in the GTSEZ there is something more sinister going on.

The relatively unregulated gambling sector of the GTSEZ allows for criminals (nominally in the drug trade) to launder their illicitly-gained cash. In converting criminal proceeds into poker chips and back again, criminal organisations are able to wash their cash, making it look more legitimate. UNODC representative Douglas linked the casinos to drug profits stating, “Increasingly large drug profits have had to move somewhere and casinos have played a special role in recent years.”

The casino likely allows this because in order to avoid suspicion and to blend in, a small portion of the proceeds are gambled away in the casino. There is no authority to hold Kings Roman Casino accountable unless the Laos and Chinese governments both got involved. Even that is just one way in which money is laundered in the GTSEZ.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and other agencies have identified the GTSEZ as a nexus of money laundering, connecting criminal groups from Taiwan to Myanmar that use crypto, underground casinos and shadow banking to move ill-gotten gains.

An even more sinister beast looms out of sight behind the GTSEZ, though that would require money laundering to keep off the official books, one of human trafficking. According to the Berkley Political Review, reports from independent journalists and NGOs have found scam centres staffed by human trafficking victims. Individuals from Thailand or from further afield like Nigeria or Brazil are trafficked in various ways and brought to the GTSEZ to engage in forced elaborate scams.

There are a variety of scam options, a popular one is the honey trap, where women lure wealthy businessmen into parting with their cash; another is simple scam calls for fake cryptocurrency schemes. People from across the world are promised jobs in return for traveling to the GTSEZ, at which point their passports are taken and management demands payment for the travel expenses. Often people’s only choice is to try and make the money back through the scam centres.

Many more do this kind of work in the region as paid employees, but a select number are effectively slaves.

Crisis group identified four guarded high-rise buildings in the zone, with barred windows and high fences wrapped in razor wire. Locals told the organisation that people were locked inside. Meanwhile Bloomberg reports that one building had an air-conditioning compressor next to nearly every barred window on the upper floors, suggesting they’d been divided into many small units, or to use another word, cells.

It is reported by victims of the centres that workers who failed to make enough money for the scam artists were punished. One Thai victim stated that she saw a man being beaten with a leather whip so severely that his blood covered the floor whilst others were locked in rooms without food. She was one of the lucky ones and was later able to escape back to Thailand.

That is not all however, as Crisis Group tells us that there is widespread human trafficking, not only of scam centre workers, but also of young women for sexual exploitation in the zone. It’s impossible to know how many people are being held against their will for certain, but the United States Institute for Peace, the Congress-funded research group, estimates there could be as many as 85,000 in Laos alone, with the majority likely in the GTSEZ. The UK government’s travel advice to the region is stark.

It reads; “Be extremely cautious in Bokeo Province, particularly near the borders with Myanmar and Thailand, and around the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone. Armed groups carry out employment scams and drug trafficking in this area.”

Scam centres have become so prevalent in the area that Interpol issued a global warning for scam centres in the Mekong sub-region, noting that their rapid spread represents a “serious and imminent threat” to global public safety. And it seems this is the straw that broke the camel’s back, with the Chinese and Laotian governments collaborating to do something about the scam centre problem. Beijing has moved to crack down on online scamming centres in the region, impelled in part by growing domestic concern about the number of Chinese citizens lured into these operations.

It is not a good look if an area owned by a Chinese businessman has human traffickers in it that target Chinese nationals. The Laotian government (likely backed by Beijing’s insistence) issued an ultimatum to the scam centres, giving them until the 25th of August 2024 to leave the GTSEZ. That deadline has now passed and many are beginning to be arrested and deported from Laos.

Laos and China appear ok with the other illegal activities that happen in the zone, so why does this matter more? Simply put, outside of the morality question, human trafficking is simply bad for business. Even Zhao knew not to stand in the two nations’ way.

It’s notable that lots of Chinese citizens have been deported from the zone. It may be that Beijing doesn’t take kindly to the potential of these centres targeting Chinese civilians and wants them to face punishment in their homeland. Although it’s not out of the question that at least some if not many of the Chinese citizens deported may have been trafficking victims.

Chinese security officials have been involved in the raids, showing the seriousness of intent to root out these scam centres. But it remains to be seen if the crackdown will solve the problem. Tightening of security in other areas like drug law enforcement has not led to widespread change. The proof will be in the pudding of whether this truly reduces human trafficking in the area.

Many of the scam centres, as well as online gambling operations, are relocating to Myanmar to avoid the crackdown. This is the nature of this kind of cross-border issue and Myanmar’s current state of conflict allows for criminals to retreat into the wilderness, out of the range of government oversight. Like all its issues, human trafficking in the zone is only going to be solved with a collaborative approach from all parties.

People are not the only living beings trafficked through the GTSEZ though. Rare and endangered animal trafficking is also highly common in the zone, even hosting illegal wildlife markets for people to buy these rare creatures at a premium. Laos banned tiger farms in 2016, although this appears to not have had much effect on the GTSEZ.

Crisis Group reports that a facility named as a “zoo” in the zone is how this rule is circumvented. This particular “zoo” was not open to the public, with an employee telling Crisis Group that the facility was used for breeding tigers and bears. It was also an abattoir, where these rare animals would be slaughtered for materials and pelts.

The organisation found that in the markets of the GTSEZ, “tiger wine” an alcoholic beverage made from the bones of tigers, was regarded as being “locally produced”. This is just the tip of the iceberg as many animals are trafficked through the GTSEZ for sale or processing into products. It is a stark reminder of the lawlessness of this land.

Questions Galore – Implications of the Zone

There are a few prevailing questions when you see what the GTSEZ has become over time and the vast array of crimes that happen there. The most important one is why. Why was a Chinese businessman allowed to take over a tiny strip of Laos and do as he please within it?

Why can’t the Laos government act to stop the criminality? And what do Beijing think of it all? It would appear that whilst kept at arms’ length, Zhao has carved himself out as a useful resource.

The tourism, especially the Chinese gambling tourism, is likely to bring in a very large amount of money for Zhao and the Laos government. Since the special economic zone was launched, Crisis Group reports that Bokeo has gone from one of the country’s poorest provinces in Laos to one of its best-off, registering the steepest reduction in poverty of any of Laos’ provinces since 2013. Like it or not, that is results.

Although it’s clear that the locals are quickly getting tired of seeing a small section of Laos’ sovereignty being stripped away.

NPR reported a souvenir vendor on the ground in the GTSEZ as saying “In (the) casino, (they are) all Chinese. That area is Chinese, this area is Lao”. Laotians are right to worry about the sovereignty of the area. Lao farmers were relocated when the GTSEZ was established as land needed to be cleared.

The ownership of the GTSEZ by a Chinese businessman, as well as the large number of Chinese people who visit and work there, could constitute something of a soft power takeover. The more Chinese influence the area has, the less likely Beijing will want to let it go when the lease is up. The CCP’s policy on what is China is pretty expansive, so a Chinese dominated, Chinese administered area fairly close to its border would not be a massive stretch for Beijing.

If nothing else, the Chinese influence is palpable in the area. The zone’s law enforcement is handled by a “public security bureau”. A private police force modelled on China’s law enforcement units of the same name.

The signs and billboards are written in Chinese and Mandarin is the spoken language of the area not Lao, whilst clocks are set to Beijing time. All in a region around 200 kilometres from mainland China itself. Bloomberg reports that a brochure on the city envisions over 300,000 people living there by 2026.

That would make the GTSEZ easily the second-largest urban centre in Laos after the capital, Vientiane, a city that is heavily influenced by Beijing. According to Bloomberg, Zhao has no formal relationship with the Chinese state, but he does present his activities as aligned with Chinese policy. Whether it is to enrich China through the laws of the GTSEZ, or simply to curry favour in Beijing as the largest player in the region, we do not know.

We know that Beijing knows him and may at any time, use him as a puppet of the state. For now, he is mainly used on state media as a rags to riches story of a successful businessman who is economically developing another nation. There is often little mention of the zone’s misdeeds and his place in them.

He has to be careful here though. Zhao is a very new, very small fish that has just stepped into an enormous pond. There are sharks here, and one of them may need Zhao for something soon enough.

Better to be useful than eaten.

As for the Laotian government, it’s not like Vientiane aren’t aware of the activities that go on in the triangle, in fact, they are complicit in it. After all, we have seen that the Laotian government can move on the zone when it is convenient, like with the scam call centres. However, they do not have much of an incentive to curb activities in the zone.

The Laotian government received a 20% equity stake in the GTSEZ in 2007. Meaning that not only are they party to Zhao’s “toll booth” agreement, a fraction of the profits that Kings Romans Group makes ends up in the Lao government’s coffers. What you end up with then is a Chinese businessman who is effectively the sovereign dictator of a small patch of Laos.

The Laotian government (which is aligned ideologically with Beijing) has no incentive to curb the actions of Zhao Wei himself. One, because he’s economically developing the area, two he’s making them money and three, because he’s Chinese. Laos wants a good relationship with China, and arresting someone who has effectively built a Chinese enclave would be a good way to anger Beijing.

Legally speaking as well, the Lao government’s hands are tied. They leased the land until 2106 and they need special permission from Zhao to enter the zone. They agreed to the level of autonomy that the zone operates under.

The nation needed the investment and this is what came. You end up with a situation where not only are the Lao government powerless to act without an ok from Beijing or Zhao himself, but they are actively disincentivised from fixing the issues there. According to the Berkley Political Review, investments in the GTSEZ by the Kings Romans Group account for more than ten percent of Laos’ GDP.

Sure, there is smuggling and scamming and people trafficking and drugs and all other nature of sins. But why would the Lao government kill their golden goose?

Future of the GTSEZ

So where does the GTSEZ go from here? Well as we mentioned its lease is up in 2106, so the zone has a long time before the inevitable political crisis of having ostensibly a Chinese exclave in Lao territory comes to pass. For now, the zone continues to expand both within and outside of its borders. 70% of the land remains as forested hills and nature reserves meaning there is plenty of land to expand into.

Early developments of villas along the Mekong will encourage wealthy businessmen to buy them, especially in a land with very little government oversight. The further development of hotels and a nearby airport that made its first flight in 2021 will only encourage more tourism to the area, especially as the new airport can be flown to directly from mainland China. To draw in more tourists, Chinese entrepreneurs are constructing a fake Venice, which sits on a “water street” below the casino.

All the while crime and inequality continue to grow.

It’s not just tourists that are being incentivised to spend their money here though, as over 2,000 hectares of nearby land is being developed into an enormous port facility to accompany the city. In 2020, a Kings Romans Group subsidiary reportedly paid the Lao government $50 million for a majority stake in a port development project at Ban Mom, a few kilometres upriver from the SEZ. It will be two thirds the size of the entire zone itself and include offices, hotels and warehouses.

It will also handle all cargo entering the zone via the Mekong. Given the notoriety of the area for smuggling, this is apt, as the port and its accompanying infrastructure will only make it easier for things and people to be smuggled in and out of the zone. Among a mass of shipping containers, whose to know which ones are filled with illicit goods?

Crisis Group asserts the port will facilitate the bypassing of other nations’ jurisdictions and help avoid crackdowns. It will effectively be a smugglers safe haven and if you fail to pay the toll to Father Zhao, one of the Chinese gunboats that patrols the Mekong might just get a phone call.

There remains a fundamental disconnect that allows these kinds of crime havens to function in these kinds of environments. With the US-backed Thailand on one side and the Burmese and Thai governments backed by China on the other, there is little will to collaborate to help solve the issues at hand on a truly cooperative international basis. With Myanmar currently at war with itself, it only strengthens non-state actors and militias on the border who facilitate the zone’s illegal activities.

As we’ve seen, Laos itself, when backed by China, can exert influence on the zone, but it is clear that crackdowns will simply drive some of the issues to elsewhere in the region, likely Myanmar. It will take a coordinated approach from all three nations and their international backers to flush out the criminals for good. However, with Myanmar in a state of collapse and with the Laos government being in on the SEZ’s deal, that’s easier said than done.

After the sanctions, the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering reported in 2023 that Laos “took no action” to respond. The Laotian government are in on the deal, so they have very little will to step in. Zhao has carte blanche to do as he pleases with the territory, as long as he isn’t acting too contrary to Chinese interests.

All of that is to say that the zone, Zhao and its illicit activities may well be here to stay for a while longer yet. Crackdowns have come and gone before, but the result has been the same, the failure to eliminate illicit activity from the region. This is an issue that predates the GTSEZ but is exacerbated by it, with the state-like bureaucracy and cronyism only further entrenching these issues.

What will happen in the GTSEZ next, we cannot know for sure. More crackdowns may come if enough Chinese citizens are found in the firing line. Perhaps one day the zone will be able to clean up its act, but that is unlikely given the Kings Roman Group’s activities and Zhao’s role cosplaying as a dictator.

Until that day, it stands to remain a beacon of sin and lawlessness in Southeast Asia, where smugglers, money launderers and gangsters run wild, all administered by a company run by a man ultimately accountable to almost nobody.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone (GTSEZ)?

The Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone (GTSEZ) is a 3,000-hectare area located on the Mekong River where Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand meet. It is known for its lawlessness and is a hub for various illegal activities, including drug trafficking, money laundering, and human trafficking.

Who is Zhao Wei and what is his role in the GTSEZ?

Zhao Wei is a Chinese businessman who founded the GTSEZ. He was granted a 99-year lease on the land by the Laotian government in 2007 and has since developed the area into a hub for illegal activities. He effectively rules the zone with little government oversight.

What kinds of illegal activities occur in the GTSEZ?

The GTSEZ is a hub for various illegal activities, including drug trafficking, money laundering, human trafficking, and wildlife trafficking. The zone’s lack of government oversight makes it an ideal location for these activities.

Why is the GTSEZ considered a ‘lawless wasteland’?

The GTSEZ is considered a ‘lawless wasteland’ because it operates with little to no government oversight. Zhao Wei, the founder, has the authority to write laws and maintain order through a private security force, allowing illegal activities to thrive.

What is the significance of the Mekong River in the GTSEZ?

The Mekong River is significant because it provides a route for smugglers to move illicit goods to global sea lanes. The river’s proximity to the GTSEZ makes it an ideal location for drug trafficking and other illegal activities.

How does the GTSEZ impact the local economy?

The GTSEZ has significantly improved the economy of Bokeo Province in Laos, turning it from one of the poorest provinces to one of the best-off. However, this economic development comes at the cost of increased illegal activities and a loss of sovereignty.

What is the role of the Laotian government in the GTSEZ?

The Laotian government has a 20% equity stake in the GTSEZ and benefits financially from its operations. They have little incentive to curb the illegal activities because of the economic benefits and the political alignment with China.

What measures have been taken to address human trafficking in the GTSEZ?

The Laotian and Chinese governments have collaborated to crack down on scam centers and human trafficking in the GTSEZ. An ultimatum was issued to scam centers to leave the zone by August 25, 2024, leading to arrests and deportations.

What is the future outlook for the GTSEZ?

The future of the GTSEZ is uncertain, but it is likely to continue expanding both within and outside its borders. The zone’s lease runs until 2106, and ongoing developments, such as the construction of a port facility, will likely facilitate more illegal activities.

How does the GTSEZ impact the surrounding countries?

The GTSEZ impacts the surrounding countries by providing a hub for illegal activities that spill over into their territories. The lack of cooperation among Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos, along with the ongoing conflict in Myanmar, makes it difficult to address these issues effectively.

Sources

• Original Places video: The Golden Triangle’s “Special Economic Zone” (For Crime)
• Hero image source by Ammodramus / openverse, cc0.