In a policy shift, Thai PM Prayut Chan-ocha says state agencies will study the construction of a long-envisioned ocean-linking canal China craves for economic and security reasons

After demurring for years, Thai Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-ocha last week ordered national planning and security agencies to look into building a possible canal across the narrow Isthmus of Kra in the kingdom’s southern region.

The canal is a major focus of a book I published last year, in which I argue that China will eventually lead efforts on the long-envisioned but never realized construction.

Indeed, the order came a month after China’s ambassador to Thailand confirmed the canal as part of his country’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Beijing’s US$1 trillion flagship project for global economic expansion.

Although the BRI — including a “Maritime Silk Road” — is a logical undertaking for the most relentless economy in history, less discussed is its possible role under a concurrent security-driven policy.

Consistent with much of China’s economic outreach in South and Southeast Asia since the turn of the century, its Silk Road can also be seen as a geo-political project aimed at power projection. The benign rubric of development, integration, and “connectivity” — already challenged on the grounds of accompanying “debt traps” — is thus subject to further scrutiny from a security standpoint.

The Silk Road’s architects likely include military as well as market analysts, projecting not only economic returns but the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) ability to prevail in a regional conflict.

This accounts for the weakness of counter-arguments to a canal; namely that construction costs would outweigh the savings of time and money that a short-cut connecting the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea would provide.

http://www.atimes.com/article/thailand-the-missing-link-in-chinas-maritime-silk-road/