Bridging Asia’s great highway
Children on the almost-completed Trans-Asian Highway. The highway will revolutionize trade and the way people move and do business in the region.(Photo by Luke Hunt/China Daily)
Crossing the Mekong River at Neak Lueng has never been easy. Located at a strategic juncture along Cambodia’s National Highway One, the provincial city straddles a busy port and important overland routes into Vietnam that once made it a critical battleground on several occasions during the country’s long running wars.
The sheer breadth of the river made bridge construction difficult, forcing traffic to rely on a time-consuming and tricky ferry service to navigate from either side.
However, improved technology, access to capital and more importantly, the agreement to construct the Trans-Asian Highway linking Singapore to China and beyond, is changing the face of Neak Lueng and delivering the Cambodian government its cherished second bridge across the Mekong.
“We have already connected the road from Poipet at the Thai border to Vietnam, it’s two lanes, all-weather all the way,” says Touch Chankosal, a deputy minister for public works and transportation. “Now we are constructing the bridge and expect it to be completed by the end of 2014.”
Construction of the $131 million suspension bridge got underway last year after the Japanese government approved funding following a direct appeal from Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.
The Japanese had rejected four previous proposals in the strategically important country, which is home to many key locations in terms of access to trade routes, including its deep water port in the southern city of Sihanoukville.
Tokyo has been a key supporter of the regional all-weather highway first mooted in the 1950s but the overland route was shelved amid four decades of war in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar that cut the Malay Peninsula off from the rest of Asia.
The last of these wars ended in Cambodia in 1998 and an initiative by the Thai government through the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific finalized the route and an intricate web of road links.
An increasingly open Vietnam and China’s economic boom bolstered support and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) approved construction of the project six years later, a 141,000 kilometer network linking 32 countries at a cost of between $300,000 and $500,000 a km.
The agreement prompted the then UN secretary-general Kofi Annan to famously remark: “From Tokyo to Tehran, from Singapore to Samarkand and from points beyond to those in between.”
That and the surprise move by officials in Myanmar to open its doors late last year — offering a potential alternative route from Thailand to India — has pushed regional trade to the brink of a new era.
Another 3,000 km of road has been earmarked for reconstruction from the Thai Friendship Bridge over the Moei River at Mae Sot to Yangon through Mandalay and on to Tamu on Myanmar’s western border with India.
Along the trade route is Dawei in Myanmar’s south where a massive $8.6 billion port and industrial complex is under construction by the Italian-Thai Development Company which has a 60-year concession. The industrial park is 16 times bigger than any project built in Thailand.
Analysts say 20 years from now the economy around the Indian Ocean would be growing at astonishing rates due to a combination of Chinese and Indian influence. So the construction of a trade route from Dawei through Bangkok to Vietnam as a strategic corridor was a regional imperative.
Within the 10-member ASEAN, cross-border trade has risen significantly over recent years with the removal of tariffs which has reduced the impact of the recessions that struck the United States and Europe and have continued to plague the global economy since 2008.
ASEAN authorities are hoping standards of living will rise further once full economic integration gets underway through the ASEAN Economic Community by 2015.
In Cambodia, the 142 km from Bavet on the Vietnamese border to the Monivong bridge that crosses the Bassac River into Phnom Penh was the final stretch of tarmac to be completed, after lengthy delays caused by thousands of angry locals embittered by attempts to move them out of their homes and businesses for paltry compensation.
Evictions and land grabbing have dominated Cambodian headlines over recent years with developers and big businesses winning out over small land holders and the politically connected cashing up by acquiring prime real estate meant to be used as green field sites.
Kim Lorn, a street vendor who works on Highway One, says she has been offered just $200 to walk away from her home of 26 years. “They give us no choice,” says the 72-year-old grandmother. “I will need $100 to move, then what? There is nowhere to go.”
Lim Sidenine, secretary of state for the Ministry of Public Works, says he is aware of the discontent but adds that this stretch of narrow, potholed and flood-prone crumbling bitumen had hardly passed as a road. Instead, it was a major obstruction to the much-needed trade route linking Vietnam with Thailand through Cambodia.
He says resettlement issues delayed construction by at least 12 months but are now resolved. The road will offer a cheaper alternative to shipping and ports for the import and export of goods while travelers and tourists will enjoy faster and safer transport.
“This is very important,” he says. “People are entitled to improved access to transport to deliver their produce to markets. This is going to be a big boost for the region’s economy and lift standards of living.”
The Neak Lueng bridge, located 61 km southeast of Phnom Penh, will be 13.5 meters wide, 37 m high and 2,215 m long. During the ground-breaking ceremony, Hun Sen highlighted the complexities of mounting such a project, saying it was “the longest, biggest and most difficult to build” bridge inside Cambodia.
Most importantly, it will mark the final stage of an epic journey to complete the Trans-Asian Highway, revolutionizing trade and the way people move and do business for decades to come.
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