著者

ケオラ スックニラン 相澤 伸広

出版者

一般財団法人 アジア政経学会

雑誌

アジア研究 (ISSN:00449237)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.68, no.1, pp.41-53, 2022-01-31 (Released:2022-02-05)

参考文献数

20

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As China pushes ahead with infrastructure development projects that are very large in proportion to the economies of several of its land-locked neighbors, there is bound to be concern over the social and economic ramifications of those projects. However, the progress of those large projects has not necessarily been unilaterally decided by China. Many of its neighbors are struggling in a world economy that is rapidly globalized based on opportunities created by maritime trade. For these land-locked neighbors, the rise of China since the 2000s has brought a major global market to their doorsteps. Furthermore, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) presents them with an unprecedented opportunity to overcome formidable geographical obstacles. This paper argues that BRI-related large-scale transportation infrastructure development in Laos is progressing in line with the intentions of Laos and China. To do so, we first examine the economic relationship between Laos and Thailand, which has the lowest geographical barriers and has been deepening with positive results for economic growth since the end of the Cold War. Nonetheless, the Asian financial crisis, which started in Thailand in 1997, made Laos acutely conscious of the risk of a catastrophe if its land-locked economy was overly dependent on a single route out of the country. That awareness prompted Laos to seek to diversify its external economic relations. Next, we show how Laos cannot dispense with the involvement of major economic powers if it plans to establish substantial economic relations with other countries in addition to Thailand. Laos has, therefore, found it particularly relevant to focus on expanding its trade and investment ties with China from the 2000s to the post-2016 era of the High Speed Railway (HSR) development. Finally, we highlight Laos’s current external debt difficulty which has been dramatically exacerbated by several large-scale projects and Covid-19 pandemic. We conclude with a discussion of how the HSR, which will be completed by the end of 2021, may contribute to the recovery of the Lao economy.