Thailand gets trains; RP, bases

Thailand gets trains; RP, bases

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 07-20-2015 MON)

 

Thailand is on a train-building spree.  Thais rightly find that trains can develop their nation's wealth.  The Thai government, for example, is cooperating with China on the Bt400-billion Bangkok-Nong Khai 160 to 180 kilometers-per-hour trains for linkage of trade and services and goods transportation in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) mainland.  Thais are also very wise.  They're cashing in on the China-Japan rivalry by getting the Japanese to outbid the Chinese on other train projects.  Thailand is getting Japan to develop and fund the high-speed train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai (its premier tour destinations).

 

China has been dominating Asean economic developments for the past decades; only recently did Japan wake up to the need for it to start competing effectively.  Japanese PM Shinzo Abe raised his country's ante in the Asean courting game by 30 percent late last year to $110 billion.

 

The train export and development has become one of the initial battle grounds for Japan and China.  Asean countries are taking advantage: Indonesian President Joko Widodo has asked the Chinese government to develop the high-speed Jakarta-Bandung bullet train--and Japan is hurrying to put up its own offer.

 

In Cambodia, the Chinese are ahead in their development plans with that country for an $11-billion, 400-kilometer rail line cum steel mill from its northern Preah Vihear province to the commercial island of Koh Kong.  Japan is attempting to vie for such projects too.

 

Even Vietnam has a 13-kilometer-long rapid transit train project with China, cutting travel time from Cat Linh to Hanoi.  The list of Asean train projects with China is just too long to list in this column, and Japan is now close on the heels of China to catch up with Asean's modernization of its railway systems.

 

Here in the Philippines, decision-makers are pathetically misleading the Filipino people, isolating the country from productive, beneficial relationships that other Asean member-states are establishing with China.  With Japan waking up to the need to upgrade its competitiveness, most of Asean are using this rivalry to their countries' benefit.  But not here in the Philippines, where supposed "patriots" rally to isolate the country from China; futilely "boycott" its goods; and rally for the importation of "foreign (US and Japanese) military bases" disguised as Philippine installations and lobby for missiles and gunships.

 

 

Of course, the Philippine government begrudgingly has to deal with China.  In the MRT upgrading project of its coaches, the government had to buy from China's Dalian Locomotive because it is the most affordable and one of the best among the world's suppliers.  But that was not without a fight from the country's economic elite rulers who tried to stop it, or from the Western supplying company working through an ambassador, who tried to bribe its way through the top Filipino political family, to impose its train coaches that are four times more expensive than the ones from China.

 

The Philippines is being misled not just on missing out on theses trains but in hundreds of billions of opportunities for trade, tourism, and financing.  The AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) is a golden opportunity to tap the huge financing pool China has set up, as well as the NDB (New Development Bank) in cooperation with the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), but the Philippines has been corralled out of them by its ruling powers, i.e. Western powers and their cohort ruling class in the Philippines, who all want to keep the Philippines under their control economically, financially, and militarily.

 

And so the Filipino people are kept in mental, intellectual, and information "concentration camps" while these powers "hamlet" the warmongers both inside and outside the country and peddle their war materiel--like this retired US Naval Academy graduate cum Gloria Arroyo National Security Adviser cum hard-selling vendor for Israeli missiles, who insists on these missiles against the better judgment of our Armed Forces' incumbent authorities who prefer to provide protection to our troops fighting terrorists and the Malaysian-supported Muslim insurgency.  How more insane can these "patriots" get?

 

However, even in military equipment, the Philippines is missing out on the most affordable and among the highest quality defense materiel.  Thailand, for instance, has bought submarines from China worth $1 billion.  These submarines, arguably, should fulfill more effectively the overall need of the Philippines for external defense--to stop arms smuggling in the South that supplies the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, BangsaMoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, Abu Sayyaf, and others, as well as to interdict shipments that result in both economic, political, and military sabotage or to resupply Philippine-controlled islands in the South China Sea.

 

But I am being waylaid to military purchases issues when the real need of the country is economic development in order to afford bigger and more legitimate defense budgets in the future.  The Philippines is the "kulelat" in trade with China while the most economically advanced in Asean have up to triple that trade volume, with Indonesia having double that of the Philippines with China.

 

The Philippines needs trains and other economic goods--not the US and Japanese military bases nor missiles and gunboats.

 

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