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Thailand - Kra Canal

In what some called a setback for China, Thailand on 03 September 2020 announced it will scrap a Chinese led-Kra canal project under which Beijing wanted to build a bypass to the Strait of Malacca. The Thai government took the step in the face of intense pressure from its arch-rival Pheu Thai Party and the public, who had raised concerns that the proposed 120-kilometre mega canal would undermine the independence of the country.

Some also fear China’s possible involvement in building the canal, which would give Beijing undue influence in the region. The House subcommittee studying the canal proposal stoked these fears by inviting three Chinese-Thai companies to demonstrate a model of the project. The firms invited were China State Construction Yangtze River (Thailand) Company Limited, The Best Group and The Aviation Industry Corporation of China. The Thai Canal would allow China to quickly move ships between its newly constructed bases in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha publicly endorsed a proposed land bridge between the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea, apparently shelving a long-discussed project to build a canal across the Malay Peninsula. The dueling project ideas have generated debate, with some calling the canal a security risk and others arguing that a so-called land bridge – deep sea ports connected by road and rail – would be far less profitable and practical than the waterway.

Prayuth on 15 Sepetmber 2020 touted the land bridge as a way to kick-start economic growth at a time when tourism and exports have taken a huge hit because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “[We] are studying a land bridge, I gave the guideline. I think it will help the economy in the long term,” Prayuth said. “We need a new project. We are looking into how to connect transportations of the west coast and east coast.”

“A canal, it won’t happen, and people are opposed to it,” transportation minister Saksiam Chidchob told a seminar in July 2020. He added that the canal isn’t feasible because water levels on either side of Thailand vary. “To dig a canal, I don’t think is suitable for Thailand because the water levels in the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand differ. In the canal, there must be transition points, which takes space and is time-consuming.”

A sub-committee of Thailand’s House of Representatives, set up in January 2020 to look into the Thai Canal, said it was almost ready with its initial study, retired Maj. Songklod Tipparat, the chairman of the sub-committee, told BenarNews in mid-September 2020. He is among the supporters of the 120-kilometer-long canal. “The Klong Thai (Thai Canal) project is unstoppable despite talks on the land bridge,” Songklod said. “The land bridge doesn’t work because it costs a lot to transfer containers from ships to trucks or trains.”

Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute, shares Songklod’s opinion, saying a land bridge “makes little economic sense.” “Unloading goods at one port, transporting them across the country by rail or road, and then uploading them at another port increases rather than reduces transportation costs,” Storey wrote.

According to media reports, enterprises from Thailand and China signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) recently in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, to jointly cut a shipping passage across the Kra Isthmus in southern Thailand. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson on 19 May 2015 said the Chinese government has no involvement in an MOU for the Kra Isthmus Canal project in Thailand. By 2017 Thais with close connections to China were reportedly beating the drum and tying the construction with China's Belt and Road initiative (BRI), through which they think they can acquire financial support for the construction. In recent years, with the progress of BRI, the Kra Canal project has constantly been hyped up in the media. China has built an oil and gas pipeline from Myanmar to Kunming. As long as China maintains this pipeline, a number of Chinese oil tankers will not need to pass the Straits of Malacca, reducing transportation costs. Some people believe the Kra Canal will shield China from US leverage in the Straits of Malacca, but it is an ill-fitting way of strategic thinking. One third of commodity shipments in the world pass through the Straits of Malacca, and obstructing this strait equals a world war. The Kra Canal is a long-proposed canal across the Isthmus of Kra, connecting Malacca with the rest of Asia. It would be but 22 miles in length, and would shorten by 1500 miles the distance between the Suez Canal and ports of China and Japan. By cutting a canal across the Isthmus of Kra, seldom more than 50 miles across, will produce a time saving of almost three days. The canal would not only make the sea journey faster, but also safer by avoiding the congested Straits of Mallaca.

Linking the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand with the Kra Canal is not a new idea. King Narai of Ayutthaya (1629-1688) first mooted the idea in 1677, but it was only during the reign of King Rama V Chulalongkorn (1868-1910) that the canal was first seriously contemplated. Over the course of a century, there were numerous attempts to dig a canal across the Isthmus of Kra. Yet, despite all the considerable surveys and feasibility studies, every single attempt failed to take off beyond the planning stages.

When the French Government Survey Expedition in 1883 was understood to have reported against the project, France was only established in Cochin China. All the trade that might have come from Saigon and Bangkok would have returned but a fractional interest on the outlay, and very little of the China and Indian trade could have been expected to pass through. Now, however, that France has practically annexed Camboja, and will, at the proper time, do the like with Annam and Tonking, not to mention the slow progress westward which may confidently be anticipated, it seemed worth while discussing the chances and difficulties of the proposition to make a short cut to the France Nouvclle of the future, the great Indo-Chinese Empire, which is to include Cochin China, Camboja, Annam, Tongking, Laos, and Siam, and is to balance the English power in India.

The isthmus is situated a little less than half-way down the Malay Peninsula, at the point where the last offshoots of the Himalayan range fall away, and the mountain backbone of the peninsula begins. The northern shore of the Bay of Bengal entrance to the proposed canal is British territory, Malawoon being the southernmost district of British Burma. The fact that Britain had territory, police stations, tin mines, as well as forest land along part of the canal route gave Britain a special interest in the French proposal, apart altogether from a consideration of the influence such a canal might have on the trade of Singapore. Otherwise it was Siam that has most say in the matter, or would have a say if she were not afraid to hint anything that might give the French grounds, even the faintest, for a quarrel.

The Kra route passed through a hilly district some twenty miles or so across before it opens out into the low country. The whole distance between the river ChumPon, flowing into the China Sea, and the mouth of the river Pakchan on the west, was twenty-seven miles as the crow flies, but the jungle track now existing is very tortuous and uneven. The highest point to be passed was two hundred and fifty feet above the level of the sea, and the average height of the hilly strip was a hundred and thirty feet. Thirty feet added to this for the depth of the canal would give a hundred and sixty feet as the average depth of the necessary cutting.

Moreover, this huge cutting would be for the greater part of the distance through rock, which is hard to cut, and yet not rock that will stand weathering and last like the sides of the Panama Canal. Assuming that this prodigious amount of earth and stone can be taken out, there comes a new difficulty in the question, what is to be done with it. It cannot be shot in any part of the hilly country. It would therefore be necessary to carry it miles away into the open plains.

At the meeting on Tuesday 16 October 2001 the cabinet came to a decision on the feasibility study of Kra Canal undertaken by Ministry of Transport and Communication. To achieve the proposed project, the National Committee on Feasibility Study was set up. In this regard, Deputy Prime Minister who oversees Ministry of Defence is a Chairman of the Committee. Minister of Defence and Minister of Transport and Communication are Vice Chairmen of the Committee.

The "Report on the Thai canal project / prepared by the Senate Ad-Hoc Committee on Kra Canal Project, Kingdom of Thailand, the House of Senate" was released in 2004 by the Thailand Senate Ad-Hoc Committee on Kra Canal Project. To cost at least US$20 billion, the project proposes to carve out a 50-km waterway across Thailand’s narrow Kra Isthmus. The canal will allow vessels plying the Europe-Middle East-North Asia route to bypass the Straits of Malacca and cut their journey by at least 1,000km. Of course, any vessel bypassing the Straits will bypass Singapore too.

The Kra Canal Initiative (KCI), an independent body which began its feasibility study in 1989, selected a specific route for the Canal, according to KCI Secretary General Weerapant Musigasarn. "The most viable location for the Canal will be from 16km south of Songkhla on the east coast of southern Thailand, to 12km north of Satun, and 4km north of Taratao island's tip," said Weerapant, former dean of the Prince of Songkhla University's school of engineering. This route, closer to the border with Malaysia, was selected due to the geological character of the terrain. The narrowest feasible strip near Chumphon is mountainous with solid granite deposits, as opposed to the selected site, which is mostly flat land. However, other obstructions remain. Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said that, for the time being, the Government had no plans to cut the Canal, but any feasibility study would contribute to the database for possible future use.

A technology called "Rail canal" could be an answer to sceptics of the controversial Kra Canal project, who fear it could split the Kingdom into two parts if a huge canal is dug at the Kra Isthmus in the South. Large vessels could still cross from the Pacific Ocean to the Indian Ocean and vice versa via the canal using railway technology that will allow huge container ships to move on giant rails over the land mass. Logistics experts believe the technology is a good option for Thailand as there is no need for massive excavation of land in the proposed Kra Canal area. Jinyu Choi, director-general of the Korea Railroad Research Institute (KRRI), said that the construction cost of the rail canal would be about US$4.8 billion (Bt160 billion), cheaper than the estimated $7.1 billion needed to build the conventional canal.