Opinion Burma rail

Myanmar’s railway minister,Aung Min,told reporters this week that work will begin on an 850 km railway line from the border between Yunnan and northern Myanmar to the Kyauk Phyu port off the Arakan coast in the Bay of Bengal.

“The whole project will take five years and cost about $20 billion. China will bear the cost and the agreement will be based on BOT (build,operate and transfer) for 50 years,” Aung Min said. Work is expected to start by December.

“China will use this railroad to transport goods from Kyauk Phyu port to its capital Beijing and other cities via Ruli and Kunming,” Aung Min said. “Their ships will no longer need to sail through the Malacca Strait,” he added. The rail line is expected to follow the alignment of the natural gas pipeline that China is already building between Kyauk Phyu and Kunming,the capital of Yunnan.

Way back in the late 19th century,the British Raj had explored the prospects of building a rail link from the Bay of Bengal to Yunnan province. Initial surveys were made,with labour from Bihar,in the 1880s. Construction finally started in the 1930s,but the project did not take off as World War II broke out. The Raj was lured by the prospect of the large Chinese market and cutting short the distance to China’s east coast via the Malacca Strait. Similar logic is now driving Beijing — to provide a shorter route to the Indian Ocean littoral which provides vital natural resources to China’s massive industries and reduce the current reliance on the Malacca Strait.

Onto Chittagong

Beijing also wants to link its rail network in Yunnan to Bangladesh via Myanmar. An understanding to this effect was reached when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina travelled to Kunming last year,and the governor of Yunnan province,Qin Guangrong,paid a return visit six months later.

Meanwhile,Bangladesh has begun work on a $250 million project to extend the railway line from Chittagong to the border with Myanmar. The initial surveys for this project were also made more than a century ago by the British Raj.

Chinese companies are actively participating in the modernisation of the Bangla railway system and have shown interest in the development of the Chittagong port.

India’s options

China’s rail links to Myanmar and Bangladesh come amidst Beijing’s plans to extend its South Xinjiang rail line across the Karakorams into Pakistan and bring the Tibet rail into Nepal.

Sitting in Delhi,it is easy to cry wolf and talk about China’s “encirclement” of India. That will not stop Beijing,which is determined to expand its national rail network into the subcontinent.

China is doing much the same on all its borderlands in the Northeast,Southeast and Central Asia; it is part of a wider plan to deepen China’s overland connectivity.

Railways have been at the very centre of modern China’s vision for nation-building. Sun Yat-Sen,the first provisional president of the Republic of China,had written in the early 20th century about political integration and economic development of China through massive rail-road development.

Sun Yat-Sen also dreamt of connecting the Chinese networks to those in India and Europe. He visualised the Chinese rail network extending all the way to Cape Town in South Africa.

While India has failed to the take full advantage of the rail network that the Raj had built,China has dramatically expanded railway construction,much along the pattern that Sun Yat-Sen had visualised.

Instead of objecting to China’s rail links to South Asia,India must modernise its own frontier railway system and connect it to the rail lines that Beijing is bringing to our borders in South Asia.

There is no rail line which runs only one way; if Beijing’s new railways give China improved access to markets across its borders in South Asia,they also let India and her South Asian neighbours partake in south-western China’s massive economic boom.

The Chinese rail lines also provide India a shorter route into China’s industrial heartland in the east. After all those were the very reasons why British Raj wanted to build a rail line connecting the subcontinent to Yunnan through Myanmar.

Next week in Dhaka,Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is expected to unveil an agreement for rail transit through Bangladesh. He must also use the moment to join hands with Sheikh Hasina to outline a bold vision to link the South Asian rail networks with those Beijing is building in Myanmar and south-western China.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research,Delhi