Railroading land-linked Laos: China’s regional profits, Laos’ domestic costs?

ABSTRACT

Previously articulated within several regional multilateral frameworks, the “China-Laos Railway” eventually turned into a flagship project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Started in 2016 and planned to be completed in late 2021, this project will provide Laos with unprecedented railway infrastructure, linking its capital Vientiane with China through the northern border town of Boten. This paper critically scrutinizes the underlying geo-economic win-win rhetoric of coupling China’s regional BRI ambitions with Laos’ national vision of transforming into a land-linked country. Understanding the newest BRI labeling of infrastructural connectivity against the backdrop of Laos’ and the region’s longer-lasting neoliberal developmental trajectory, I examine the financial mechanism of the railway project and the different temporal and spatial scales of Laos’ and China’s calculation of potential benefits. These are juxtaposed with the empirical reality of already visible dynamics and impacts of Chinese investment alongside the railway. Together, they tend to paint a future of Chinese profits at the expense of Laos’ sustainable long-term development. Contributing to much-needed grounded accounts of local unfoldings of China-backed megaprojects, I pay particular attention to vernacular discourse and experience to fully understand the nature, processes and impacts of BRI financing.

KEYWORDS:

• Laos
• China
• railway
• infrastructure
• Belt and Road Initiative
• financing

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Karen Lai, James Sidaway and Shaun Lin Ziqiang for convening a very fruitful and insightful panel on financing the Belt and Road Initiative at the 1st FinGeo Global Conference in Beijing, 15–18 September 2019, and their great efforts to publish its contributions in this special section in Eurasian Geography and Economics.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

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

Notes

1. The only rail tracks in Laos constitute a three-kilometer long section from the First Thai- Lao Friendship Bridge to Thanaleng near Vientiane run by the State Railways of Thailand.

2. While partly informed by this multi-sited ethnography on small-scale traders from February 2015 to January 2016, this paper mainly draws on more recent stays in northern Laos’ Luang Namtha province in January/February 2017 and March 2018, most recently complemented with trips to Oudomxay Province and Vientiane in August 2019.

3. Name changed.

4. After rounds of delays and renegotiations with their Chinese counterparts, Thai officials are now optimistic that the Thai section of the Pan-Asia Railway Network (often referred to as “Chinese-Thai High-Speed Rail”), ultimately extending the China-Laos Railway to Bangkok through northeast Thailand’s border province Nong Khai, will start operations in 2023. However, this refers only to the first leg of 252 km between Bangkok and Nakhon Ratchasima whereas negotiations for the second leg of 621 km up to Nong Khai are still under way (e.g. The Straits Times 2019). In Malaysia, construction of the China-backed East Coast Rail Link resumed after a year-long suspension, following an agreement to cut its costs by a third. Expected to be operational by the end of 2026, it will connect Kelantan Province in the northeast (bordering southern Thailand) with Kuala Lumpur and Port Klang, thereby also importantly linking up the South China Sea with the Straits of Malacca (e.g. Channel News Asia 2019). The Kuala Lumpur-Singapore High-Speed Rail, a bilateral project of Malaysia and Singapore, was likewise put on hold until May 2020. The originally planned opening of late 2026 has been changed to early 2031 (e.g. Channel News Asia 2018).