Drivers of China’s Regional Infrastructure Diplomacy: The Case of the Sino-Thai Railway Project

ABSTRACT

The land-based Silk Road Economic Belt, as a part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, has become central for the country’s economic diplomacy since 2013. As part of these initiatives, Chinese authorities have been keen to expand their high-speed railways across the country’s border into neighbouring countries. Thailand has been one of the front-runners in negotiating high-speed railway projects with China. This article seeks to answer the following questions: what are the driving forces behind the land-based Silk Road Belt; what are the rationales behind the Sino-Thai rail project; and how can the process and outcome of Sino-Thai negotiations be understood? These questions reflect on whether we are witnessing Chinese economic diplomacy to advance commercial and wider economic goals or Chinese economic statecraft to serve foreign policy objectives. Overall, after examining the evidence, the article argues that Silk Road Economic Belt diplomacy and the Sino-Thai rail project are driven predominantly by economic motivations.

KEY WORDS:

• China
• Thailand
• Belt and Road Initiative
• high-speed rail
• infrastructure development

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the members of the International Development Research Group (IDRG) at Roskilde University, the two anonymous reviewers and the editor for valuable comments and suggestions. The usual disclaimers apply.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. While there is no single standard, high-speed generally refers to railway speeds higher than 200 kph. HSR is a system made up of: railway infrastructure, rolling stock, communication/control and operating processes.

2. The project is a MSR with trains running up to 180 kph but adopting Chinese railway standards and with standard-gauge double-track lines designed for a maximum speed of 250 kph. The project is part of a regional HSR line linking China with parts of Southeast Asia. In this article, we refer to the Sino-Thai railway project after December 2014 as MSR.

3. Lieberthal and Oksenberg (1988, 137) argue that there is no “unified, hierarchical chain of command” in place and that decision-making in China could best be described as “fragmented authoritarianism.”

4. Regional rebalancing through BRI is difficult to implement, not least for West China. China’s first big data report on the BIR has central Henan and southern Yunnan Provinces on the top-ten list, but the remaining eight are the already rich eastern and southeastern provinces: Guangdong, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Tianjin, Fujian, Jiangsu, Shandong, and Beijing (Scio 2016).

5. The national savings rate in 2015 was still high at almost 48% of GDP. Savings are, through “financial repression,” still channelled from households to corporate actors (see Setser 2016, 11).

6. On the process of technology transfer, reverse engineering and the successful development of local technological capabilities, see Liu, Liu, and Shaodong (2016).

7. The Chinese ambassador to Thailand in July 2016 felt the need to declare that China had never sought such development rights (China Daily, July 26, 2016).