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In late December this year, Thailand's new Prime Minister Seta, who was visiting Japan, enthusiastically introduced the Kra "Land Bridge" project to the Japanese side, but the "project" that the prime minister personally sold did not seem to receive much positive response from the Japanese side. And this project, which is in the same vein as the Kra Isthmus Canal, is likely to be "stillborn" in the end.
The idea of the Kra Isthmus Canal can be traced back to 400 years ago, but it has not been possible to put it into practice due to Thailand's own economic strength. Even in modern times, it has remained permanently on paper because of its huge cost. But digging a canal at the Kra Isthmus on the Malay Peninsula is another extremely tempting project.
Because the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian archipelago have always been blocked, only the Strait of Malacca is the nearest passage through the South China Sea to the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, which has not only achieved the rise of Singapore, but also brought the necessary way to the shipping between East Asia and the Middle East, Africa and even Europe.
Therefore, if a canal can be excavated on the Malay Peninsula and belongs to the Kra Isthmus in Thailand, then another important passage between the east and the west will appear. It is important to know that the nearest distance between the east and west of the Kra Isthmus is only 56 kilometers, and once it is opened, it will shorten the voyage by about 1,000 kilometers compared with the Strait of Malacca, and both freight costs and time costs will be greatly reduced. But the canal has not been built, so the Thai government came up with another "land bridge" plan, replacing the canal with a railway. According to the plan of the Thai government, a 90-kilometer railway will be built to connect Ranong province on the west side of the isthmus to Chumphon province on the other side of the northeast, and then focus on building these two coastal port cities, connecting the Myanmar Sea and the Gulf of Thailand by cargo ships and rail transshipment.
In order to realize this seemingly perfect plan, the Thai government plans to invest 1 trillion baht, equivalent to more than 200 billion yuan. Of course, the Thai government naturally can't come up with such a large amount of money, so this year's newly elected Prime Minister Setha was the first to think of China, as early as October during the Belt and Road Summit Forum held in Beijing, he strongly recommended it to China. After that, he brought the project plan to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit held in San Francisco, USA, and finally Japan, which was recently marketed.
Although the Chinese side is very interested in this project, it will not lose its judgment because of the atmosphere of US-Japan participation deliberately created by the Thai side, after all, the water is still quite deep.
Is Thailand's "land bridge" plan really reliable? Despite Thailand's sincerity, it may not be able to replace the Strait of Malacca!
In order to be able to access the investment funds of the Land Bridge, the Thai prime minister directly promised that the investor would receive a 50% stake and a 50-year concession, although it may seem tempting. However, according to the plan, the "land bridge" will only start bidding construction in 2025, the first phase of the project will be completed in 2030, and the construction will be fully completed in 2039. Not to mention the various changes in this period, whether the current Thai prime minister can get the project off the ground is a big question, so such a commitment is not really significant.
Although the mainland is the country that needs this passage the most in terms of strategic needs, as long as the Kra "land bridge" can be completed, it will be able to give the mainland an important passage to the sea lifeline and avoid the weakness of the Strait of Malacca. But when you look at it from an economic and commercial point of view, there seems to be a major problem with this plan.
Because the "land bridge" plan is different from the canal, even if the railway passage is built, it still needs to expand the ports on both sides of the construction, and cargo ships cannot pass directly, and they still need to be unloaded and transferred. And this back-and-forth transshipment will greatly reduce the time efficiency, and it may even be better to go directly through the Strait of Malacca. The plan advertised a time saving of more than 4 days, as well as 15% of the shipping cost, is probably just an idealistic idea.
One of the main problems is that loading and unloading takes time. Generally speaking, a crane will load and unload 30 standard containers in one hour, even if a ship uses 3 cranes to rotate continuously for 24 hours, if you want to unload a medium and large cargo ship of 10,000 standard containers, it will take at least 4.5 days, so that the time of unloading and loading will take at least 9 days, and then counting the time of railway transshipment, it is simply asking for trouble.
Even if the port construction can fully reach the ultra-large-scale and automation level of Yangshan Port on the mainland, and achieve the efficiency of unloading 10,000 TEU cargo ships in one day, it will take at least two days to unload and load. And this is just the loading and unloading of a freighter, if you assume that one side can accommodate 10 berths, then the freight volume on one side reaches 100,000 boxes a day, and the railway in the middle can transport these 100,000 boxes in one day is already very good.
In this way, even in the extreme state, the time cost saved by the Kra "land bridge" has been completely delayed, there is no advantage at all, and more importantly, a large number of ships cannot always queue up to unload, compared to the Strait of Malacca's 2 million containers a day, it is really difficult to replace it.