By Kalinga Seneviratne<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SINGAPORE (IDN) \u2014 A new 414 kilometres high-speed rail link between China and Laos has finally opened landlocked mountainous Laos to the region and made it possible for trade and tourism to expand across Southeast Asia. This link has technically facilitated rail travel from China to Singapore, and land-based trade that could make the South China Sea less important for regional trade. (P25)\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This rail link built at a cost of $5.9 billion is a central plank of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) while it also is part of Laos\u2019 strategic vision to go from landlocked to \u201cland-linked\u201d economy and overcome the development lag that has come with being an inland, mountainous state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking to China\u2019s Xinhua news agency in August, Lao Prime Minister Phankham Viphavanh said the BRI “is an opportunity, through economic infrastructure, trade, investment and people-to-people connectivity to deepen the mutual trust and help between China and Belt and Road Initiative countries\u201d and the rail link is an important part of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new rail line starts from the Laos capital Vientiane and goes up to Boten on the northern border with China. It is then linked to the Chinese rail system across the border at Mohan. The first two freight trains have crossed the border both ways already transporting goods worth $3 million. The border is still closed for human traffic due to the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the railway\u2019s opening ceremony on December 3 where Buddhist monks chanted and sprayed holy water on the Chinese-built train engine, Lao President Thongloun Sisoulith said that it marked the day as the beginning of a new era for Laos, as the country made a significant step on its transition from a land-locked mountainous nation to a land-linked logistical hub.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On its opening day, the railway station in Vientiane was packed from early morning with middle-class Vientianers<\/em> who were determined to secure a seat on what was, for many, the first-ever ride on a train. More than 5,000 people have purchased tickets to ride on the train during the first week of its operations, and Laotian Times reported that more than 114,000 residents in the Chinese city of Kunming have purchased tickets to travel to Laos when the border is expected to be opened next month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Laos-China Railway Co. will operate Laos\u2019 segment of the railway, as a joint venture between the China Railway Group and two other Chinese government-owned companies, which collectively hold a 70 per cent stake in the rail project. A Lao state company holds the remaining 30 per cent. Laos\u2019 debt liability in the project is believed to be $1.54 billion with the Chinese joint-venture partner owning another $2.4 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is Laos\u2019s first rail network and the Chinese had to train hundreds of Laotians in running the network\u2014from engine drivers to linesmen and railway maintenance workers. Sida Phengphongsawanh who comes from the hilly town of Muangxay, about 100 km from the Chinese border is one of the train drivers trained by the Chinese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her hometown has traded with the Chinese across the border for a long time. \u201cThe Laos-China railway has given me a stable job, and at the national level,\u201d she told Xinhua, predicting that it will drive all-around development of the country, and help her hometown of Muangxay by facilitating the importation of their products to China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With proper planning and appropriate foreign investments in development activities along the rail route, the Laos-China railway would help to improve several aspects of the Lao economy, including tourism and export-import industry that could help Laos to manage its debt liability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese infrastructure projects are proof that Beijing\u2019s massive Belt and Road Initiative continues to break ground even amid a pandemic, with far-reaching implications for Southeast Asia. They will no doubt burnish Beijing\u2019s appeal as a vital partner in promoting connectivity and spurring economic recovery in the region,\u201d said Lucio Blanco Pitlo a research fellow at the Asia-Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation in Manila in a commentary published this month by Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The new transport networks will be even more crucial after the world\u2019s largest free trade agreement, the Regional Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) takes effect in 2022, bringing together all 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its five dialogue partners, including China, points out Pitlo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Laos-China Railway, which broke ground in 2015 and marks the effective extension of China\u2019s high-speed rail system beyond its own borders, is an impressive technological undertaking by the Chinese. They had to navigate in terrain that still has unexploded bombs dropped by the US during the Vietnam war. The standard gauge single line railway cuts through rugged mountain terrain with 61 km of bridges and 198 km of tunnel. It has 21 stations within Laos with 10 for passenger traffic and others for goods traffic that indicates the dual development nature of the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTo which extent this benefits the country\u2019s predominantly rural population remains open to question,\u201d notes The Diplomat\u2019s Sebastian Strangio. \u201cThroughout its six years of construction, people who were displaced from their homes to make way for the railway complained they were paid too little (compensation),\u201d he added. He also points out that one U.S.-based analyst has described the railway as \u201cessentially a Chinese public infrastructure project that happens to exist in another country\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This railway is not the only Chinese backed transport project in the region. In 2018, several Chinese companies signed an agreement with the Laotian government to build a 580 km highway from Vientiane to Pakse, a city in southern Laos near the Cambodian border that could link the rail corridor with a good road network across the country that will facilitate more trade between provinces and with neighbouring states, acting as a driver of economic growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another project, the construction of Thanaleng Dry Port (TDP) and Vientiane Logistics Park (VLP), and linking it with Vung Ang Port, on the coast of Vietnam\u2019s central Ha Tinh province, and the 190 km Phnom Penh-Sihanoukville expressway, in neighbouring Cambodia, is expected to open next year. Chinese companies are also busy building new airports in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh and the popular tourist city Siem Reap. The TDP and VLP projects are, however, not funded by China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While there is a flurry of construction giving shape to efforts by Asian neighbours to synergise the Master Plan for ASEAN Connectivity 2025 and China\u2019s BRI, that was a key item in the China-ASEAN special commemorative summit in November, the alternatives to the so-called \u201cChina debt-traps\u201d are yet to be realised notes Pitlo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFrom Japan\u2019s Partnership for Quality Infrastructure<\/em>, the United States\u2019 Build Back Better World<\/em> to Europe\u2019s recently unveiled Global Gateway<\/em> shows how Beijing\u2019s drive is forcing rivals to compete\u201d argues Pitlo. \u201dBut with the exception of Japan, these new endeavours have yet to manifest in terms of projects in the pipeline. Until then, China\u2019s belt and road will continue to find strong resonance among regional countries\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pitlo believes that the Vientiane-Boten line, for instance, can build momentum for similar rail linkages in Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar. \u201cNotwithstanding the challenges, China\u2019s gambit is paying dividends, with growing contracts and consequent clout among countries taking part in its global connectivity programme\u201d he argues, adding that the new railway \u201cwill be a game-changer for Laos, Southeast Asia\u2019s lone landlocked country\u201d. [IDN-InDepthNews \u2013 16 December 2021]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Kalinga Seneviratne SINGAPORE (IDN) \u2014 A new 414 kilometres high-speed rail link between China and Laos has finally opened landlocked mountainous Laos to the region and made it possible for trade and tourism to expand across Southeast Asia. This link has technically facilitated rail travel from China to Singapore, and land-based trade that could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,28,16,32],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2172","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-asia-pacific","8":"category-economy-finance-trade","9":"category-news","10":"category-regions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2173,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2172\/revisions\/2173"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}