Opinion | China's new high-speed rail seeks to boost ASEAN trade: Consider the case of Vietnam
By Augustus K. Yeung
Today's news headline reads, "US warns Houthis to cease attack on Red Sea vessels…" and one can easily predict what the following words, "or face military action." While the world expects America to use its influence and pressure Israel to stop bombing civilians in Gaza, the best it can do is to threaten a minor force.
In stark contrast, China is and has been quietly doing the opposite. It builds. It builds to benefit its Southeast Asian neighbors.
China is ready to unilaterally open its industries that it has long-standing traditional advantages in, including manufacturing and services – to businesses from members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), experts said.
What are its far-reaching implications?
While speaking at a sub-forum of the 89th International Forum on China Reform held in Haikou, capital of Hainan province, Chi Fulin, president of the China Institute for Reform and Development said that the overall conditions for unilateral opening-up to ASEAN are in place.
What exactly does this inform the public?
In reading this article, we learn how China has been painstakingly developing and deepening trade relations, benefiting its fellow Asians by first building a new high-speed rail network.
(The construction company that is responsible for this infrastructure construction is the Nanning branch – China State Railway Group).
What is China's goal?
This is part of the Xi Jinping signature project known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), whose strategic significance and economic purpose is becoming clearer as time goes by. (Earlier, we captured the case of Cambodia, which has been undergoing the same experience.)
Read the following excerpt carefully and we can make sense of such a grand scheme. The goal will become clearer as more of these sets of bilateral relations are developed, deepened and reported one after another.
The first high-speed railway connecting a Chinese city on the Vietnam border with China's national network has begun operations, underlining Beijing's efforts to deepen trade and investment cooperation with its Southeast Asian neighbors.
The 47km Fang Dong Railway links the cities of Fang Chenggang – which has the biggest seaport in western China and is a major gateway to the ASEAN – and Dongxiang in the southern Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region via the coastline of the Beibu Gulf, also known as the Gulf of Tonkin.
Dongxiang sits across the Beilun River from the northern Vietnamese city of Mong Cai.
"After the Fang Dong Railway was put into operation, the structure of the road network in the Beibu Gulf economic zone has been further improved," the China State Railway Group said. "It is of great significance for facilitating the travel of people along the route, boosting border tourism and economic and trade exchanges, and promoting infrastructure connectivity for the BRI."
The dual-purpose line, which can handle both passengers and freight, has a maximum speed of 200km/h.
Having overcome various geological and environmental challenges during four years of construction, the line has reduced the travel time between Fang Chenggang and Dongxing from one hour to 19 minutes, according to the China State Railway Group.
The launch of the Fangdong Railway comes after China and Vietnam announced closer cooperation on cross-border rail development – during a state visit by President Xi Jinping to Hanoi earlier this month.
A joint statement released during the visit mentioned the 332km Lao Cai-Hanoi-Haiphong standard-gauge railway project that, once constructed, could effectively connect the two countries' railway networks.
Note: Currently, trains cannot run through the border due to different gauges adopted by the two countries. But despite having appeared in every diplomatic declaration between Beijing and Hanoi in the past eight years, the Lao Cai-Hanoi-Haiphong railway project has remained on the drawing board – due to Vietnam's concerns over costs, anti-China sentiment and broader geopolitical factors.
China has been ramping up the construction of rail links and infrastructure projects around the Beibu Gulf in recent years to boost trade and logistics passage bridging hinterland provinces in southwestern China with the ASEAN bloc, which is its largest trading partner.
Exports to the ASEAN region topped US$473 billion in the first 11 months of the year, while imports from the 10-nation bloc stood at US$352 billion during the same period, Chinese customs figures showed. (Source: SCMP)
Building the infrastructure is not exactly difficult compared with coming to terms with the adverse conditions and contradictions complicated by Washington, whose goal it was to stall the infrastructure building and the developing and deepening of ties with Vietnam – as it has been picked to and coached by the Americans to counter China, a rising power in Asia-Pacific.
Consider Vietnam's concerns over costs. Vietnam is taking a rational approach as it must make ends meet financially. There was also the Western media outlets' BRI "debt trap theory" to debunk.
On the Anti-China sentiment, Vietnam had been a vasal state of China in the days of dynasties, which may have residual apprehension and animosity against the Chinese.
Broad geopolitical factors, too, may have hindered Vietnam's decision to go ahead on a grand infrastructure project with China. One such factor may be the brief conflict when PLA under Deng Xiao-ping crossed the border and launched a military intervention "to teach it a lesson" – as Vietnam was then under the sway of Soviet influence.
Another factor is Uncle Sam's forever invisible hand. As early as Obama's administration, Hillary Clinton then Secretary of State had tried to tap Vietnam and trap it into a conflict situation with China, which was foiled by a senior Chinese diplomat.
Hanoi, therefore, has been vacillating and showing its vulnerability: when instigated by Washington, it sometimes became vocal over the territorial dispute, but it is often wise enough not to politicize the situation, unlike the Philippines.
Closely monitoring the developments, Aristotle C. Dy, president of the Philippine Association for Chinese Studies, said that China's high-level opening-up is destined to generate opportunities for ASEAN in the coming years.
To contact the writer, please direct email: AugustusKYeung@ymail.com
Read more articles by Augustus K. Yeung:
Opinion | In just 10 years, China's BRI cooperation delivers fruitful results
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