This is the flagship project of the Thai government of Srettha Thavisin, in place since August 2023: connecting the Indian Ocean to the Gulf of Thailand thanks to a double land bridge (road and rail) crossing the Kra Isthmus, the thin and long “paw” southwest of Thailand, between Burma and the Malay peninsula.
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The cost is estimated at 25 billion euros, with a completion date of 2030. To do this, deep-water ports would be developed at Ranong, on its west coast, and at Chumphon, on the east coast. The containers would be unloaded there, then transferred to trucks or trains over 90 kilometers before undergoing the reverse operation on the other bank. A law, called “the southern economic corridor” must be proposed in the last quarter of 2024 to ratify the project.
The idea is not new: it is a sea serpent in Thailand’s history, more than a century old, which has always failed to achieve consensus. It was resurrected in the 2010s, when China began to take an interest in it – with a Chinese company even signing a memorandum of understanding in 2015 with a company set up by Thai supporters of the project, but without the approval of none of the governments.
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In 2020, the government resulting from the military junta launched the idea of a land bridge on the grounds that a canal was politically unacceptable – because it symbolically “separates” the Thai south of the Malay ethnic group, in the grip of a long-term autonomist rebellion , and the rest of the territory. The current government, pro-business, has taken it over and is increasing its tours abroad in search of investors: the latest, on May 10, saw the Thai transport minister expound on the merits of land bridge to around thirty Chinese public groups in Beijing.
The economic viability of the megaproject remains questionable: the bridge would save between two and five days of navigation for ships which then go back to Northeast Asia, according to government experts. But others say the cost and time required for double transshipment minimizes or even negates any benefit – unless there is major congestion in the Strait of Malacca.
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This is where the Chinese factor comes into play: the land bridge provides an additional solution to its “Malacca dilemma”, the fear of seeing the strait blocked at Singapore by the Americans in the event of war in Taiwan. This is even the primary motivation for the “Silk Roads”, President Xi Jinping’s major project: to develop alternative land and sea routes, for goods and energy, via Russia and Central Asia (towards the Europe), Burma (towards the Indian Ocean and East Asia) and the rest of Southeast Asia.
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