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 frontrunners 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 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 all are driven predominantly by economic motivations.

When the state goes transnational: The political economy of China’s engagement with Indonesia

“…This perspective is especially salient in infrastructure export, where China is said to leverage capital and technology vis-à-vis smaller nations to support its rise as a global power (Oh, 2018; Tritto, 2021). Contrarily, Lauridsen’s (2020) research on the Sino-Thai HSR project interlinking Bangkok and the rural, north-eastern provinces, found that the project has been driven predominantly by economic motivations. Although he does not deny Chinese foreign policy and geopolitical objectives, Lauridsen argues that what matters more in the Sino-Thai HSR project is the market-seeking directives of its infrastructure and engineering firms, many of which are suffering from overcapacity and domestic business slowdown as a result of the deceleration of the Chinese economy following years of rapid growth.…”

The ‘soft infrastructure’ of the Belt and Road Initiative: Imaginaries, affinities and subjectivities in Chinese transnational education

“…The BRI's five major goals are policy coordination, facilities connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration and people‐to‐people bonds (Belt and Road Initiative, 2020). Extant scholarship on the BRI, thus far focused primarily on hard infrastructures (e.g., cross‐continental transport networks, energy and mining facilities, communication technologies; see Drache et al ., 2019) even as the growing literature is expanding into cultural, digital and medical aspects, have examined the ways in which these large‐scale infrastructural projects help to consolidate China's geoeconomic and geopolitical powers (Lauridsen, 2020; Summers, 2016). Scholars have critiqued China's management of debt relationships with African and Southeast Asian countries and raised concerns regarding the sustainable governance of such mega‐projects (Gong, 2019; Liu, 2020).…”