China’s development of a vast train network across Southeast Asia continues. Projects in Laos, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia could eventually lead to a 3,000-kilometre-plus bullet and high-speed rail connection between southwest China and Singapore, but there are some delays amid question marks over costs and benefits.
“Chinese firms have long been looking to sell and export their infrastructure technology to other countries,” says Gary Bowerman, founder of Check-in Asia, travel analysts. The Belt and Road Initiative launched under President Xi Jinping a decade ago, allows them to do this.
The Laos-China project, saw the southwest Chinese city of Kunming linked to the capital of land-locked Laos, Vientiane by semi-high-speed rail in 2021, meaning it’s now possible to cover the 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) between the two hubs in 10 hours. According to official comments, the line has supported Laotian businesses and facilitated Chinese travel.
And in October last year, China helped Indonesia launch Southeast Asia’s first bullet train at a cost $7.3 billion. Now, cultural powerhouse Bandung in West Java is connected to the Indonesian capital Jakarta and there is talk of extending the line to the major port of Surabaya according to the director of joint state enterprise PT KCIC, Dwiyana Slamet Riyadi.
Furthermore, the Laos-China railway is intended to hook up with Bangkok thanks to Thailand’s second high-speed rail project. Although dogged by delays and rising costs, the project should be online by 2028, says the Thai government, which is footing the $5 billion (179 billion baht) bill for the full first phase of the construction. China, partnering on design, system installation, and train procurement, has remained silent on the timeframe.
That extension to Bangkok is expected to lead to an eventual expansion into northern Malaysia, which will connect to capital city Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, 350 kilometres further south (218 miles).
Tenders for that project were submitted in January 2024, but since then the East Japan Railway Co. and other Japanese firms have pulled out, amid jitters over financial commitments from the Malaysian side and questions over the necessity of the project when “there are already efficient rail trains and flights less than three hours. The costs are just way too high and it would be too difficult to do,” according to Wong Muh Rong, managing director and founder of Astramina Advisory in Kuala Lumpur.
Other critics of the projects say they are a trojan horse for Chinese industrial dominance and financing mechanisms that leave destination countries saddled with unmanageable debt. Chinese state media has reported the Laos-China railway carried over four million tons of freight in 2023, up 95% in one year. One passenger, political economist Pon Souvannaseng, assistant professor of global studies at Bentley University in the US, said the train was “very clearly, even near the full construction and inauguration” cargo-oriented, with China and Thailand being the main trade beneficiaries and Laos, whose maturing loans from the Chinese are causing a fiscal crisis, paying the bill.
“China of course, sees Southeast Asia as a key market for export as well as a key area for security and I think, ultimately wants to see Southeast Asian countries within its sphere of geopolitical influence,” Souvannaseng said.
