Is Thailand a Competitive Battlefield for High-speed Rail between China and Japan?

Abstract

When China launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Japan announced the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP), Southeast Asia’s geopolitics had to be revisited. While some scholarly works argue that these initiatives foster collaboration, cases of aid for high-speed railway (HSR) indicate intense competition. As previous literature focuses largely on the roles of China and Japan as donors, this article, to fill the gaps, examines Thailand’s role as a recipient of foreign assistance. The findings do not represent the competitive landscape of BRI and FOIP, which is visible in many countries, nor do they reflect scenes of collaboration between China and Japan. Rather, they depict scenarios of benefit sharing that Thailand has allocated. Whereas the Sino-Japanese rivalry is acute in the geopolitical sphere, because of Thailand’s role as a mediator rather than a passive recipient, overt competition seems absent in the bidding for the HSR project in Thailand. Additionally, the case of HSR represents divergent perspectives of foreign assistance, where loans are viewed as reciprocal benefits rather than sources stepping in to assist the country. This view is mirrored in the reorganization of operations pertinent to foreign assistance, reflecting a shift in the perspective of the relationship between official development assistance (ODA) donors and recipients toward benefit-sharing under the guise of foreign assistance.