According to media reports on September 5, Thailand recently officially announced that the high-speed railway built by China-Thailand cooperation will be officially opened in 2023. At present, this project has become the first large-scale joint project of China and Thailand. But on this basis, Thailand has announced a new plan to continue to build a high-speed rail link with China to Kunming and Singapore. It is understood that Thailand will pay for road construction, the first phase is 41.8 billion yuan, while China is responsible for design, train procurement and construction tasks.

As we all know, the second branch of China-Thailand high-speed rail will connect northeastern Thailand and Laos; the third branch will connect Bangkok and Malaysia. Nowadays, Thailand, which feels the strength of China’s infrastructure, decided to invest in a high-speed rail connecting Singapore. This will make the whole Southeast Asia closer, and China plays a vital role.

At present, most Southeast Asian countries are actively carrying out infrastructure construction, including Vietnam, where the economy is growing rapidly. However, in the construction of high-speed rail, Vietnam has made the opposite decision. As early as around 2013, Vietnam wanted to establish a high-speed railway between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, and bid for the world. In the end, Vietnam chose Japan’s Shinkansen technology, but now Vietnam’s project has not stopped.

The North-South high-speed rail project in Vietnam is: If the plan is provided by Japan, the total length of the high-speed railway is about 1,560 kilometers, and the total cost is estimated to be 6.5 trillion yen (about 432.4 billion yuan). This is an astronomical figure for the country of Vietnam (2018 GDP equivalent to only Shanxi/Guizhou provinces in China).