Crossing the line
For Laos, the cost of the HK$56 billion high-speedrail link connecting Vientiane to Yunnan may far outweigh the benefits. In the first of a two-part series on China's growing economic interests in its neighbour, David Eimer looks at why the project may have grave consequences for one of Asia's poorest nations
Moving their homes to make way for mainland-inspired projects is becoming a way of life for Mai Kham Saivong and his fellow villagers. In 2008, his village of Boten was relocated a few miles south from the border of Laos and southern China's Yunnan province because their land was required for a mainland-owned casino complex.
Now Saivong faces another forced eviction, along with about half of the village, this time to make way for a controversial and ambitious high-speed railway designed to bring Southeast Asia into the economic embrace of Beijing. And while Saivong is set to lose his home again, the railway's impact will be felt all over Laos and leave the impoverished country indebted to its giant neighbour for generations.
Standing outside his wooden house, the 66-year-old grandfather points towards the nearest hill, rearing up to the south of the village. "That's where the railway will go. The Chinese surveyors and our government officials came last August and told us they're going to build a tunnel through it. That's why we have to move again."
Those surveyors were part of a team of 1,600 sent by the China's former Ministry of Railways, which was dissolved in March this year. Their mission was to plan the route of a link that will run from Kunming, in Yunnan, south to Laos' capital, Vientiane. The track will then cross into Thailand and head to Bangkok. The ultimate goal is for the line to terminate in Singapore, after having passed through Kuala Lumpur and elsewhere in Malaysia, while other branches of the network will stretch into Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam.
It is not a new idea. As far back as 1900, the British and French, then the colonial powers in Southeast Asia, proposed building a railway that would link Kunming to Singapore, but it is Beijing that is making the line a reality. Work on the railway is expected to begin early next year, with the line through Laos completed by 2019. Then, mainland goods will be able to move south in even greater numbers while the natural resources of the region head north.
For Saivong and most of the other 6.5 million residents of Laos, just thinking about any sort of train, let alone one that can cruise at 190km/h, requires an imaginative leap. Currently, Laos has only three kilometres of functioning railway track, operated by Thailand and running just across the border close to Vientiane. Few Laotians have ever travelled on it.
A largely agricultural nation, where the average annual income is a mere nine million kip (HK$8,760), according to the World Bank, Laos lacks both infrastructure and industry. Many people, especially in the northwest of the country, where the railway will cross the border at Boten, live without running water or electricity.
