ASIA-TRANSPORT: Vietnam Making Tracks Toward Regional Rail System

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Serguei Blagov

HANOI, Aug 20 1996 (IPS) - A newly revived Vietnam-China rail link has got off to a slow start, but Hanoi authorities are not about to give up hope on what may be the first step toward a regional goal of a trans-Asian rail network.

Regional authorities have stated a commitment to building a trans-Asian rail network with the eventual goal of an inter- connecting link across Eastern Europe and into the West. The aim is to boost inter and intra-regional trade and tourism.

In the north, the sub-divided network would straddle the Central Asian nations of the former Soviet Union down to the Korean peninsula, while in the south it would stretch from Iran to Sri Lanka. The other sub-divisions would link the Indochina countries with South-east Asia.

When the idea was first floated in the 1960s, it did not get on track railway project did not get on track largely because the region remained mired in a Cold War divide.

That era has passed, and while there are still some territorial disputes to be resolved — particularly in the South China Sea where Beijing has laid claim to areas that South-east Asian nations say are their own — economics now is the defining issue of relations across the region.

And the revival of a rail-link between Vietnam and China after almost two decades, is testimony to the new era in relations, with the first cargo train from China have earlier this month arrived at Dong Dang — Vietnam’s border train station in the northern Lang Son province.

“The two nations are going to increase railway cargo traffic across the border in the coming months,” an official of Vietnam Railway Authority told IPS.

Rail links with China provided a vital supply line for North Vietnam during its war against Americans in the south. Political and rail-links were however severed in the late 1970s when Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia and overthrew Pol Pot’s brutal Khmer Rouge regime.

In 1979, Vietnam and China also fought a brief, but fierce border war during which Dong Dang town was totally demolished.

Bilateral ties were normalised five years ago, but it was only during an official visit of General Secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party Do Muoi to China in November 1995 that Hanoi and Beijing agreed to restore rail links.

However, the initial twice-a-week schedule of Hanoi-Beijing passenger trains that started in February, has not been encouraging: some trains have carried less than ten passengers. Authorities on both sides of the border however hope that bilateral trade may result in more success for the cargo trains.

One reason why the train ride has not attracted too many business or tourism travelers is because the fare is now 165 dollars while a Hanoi-Beijing air ticket costs 245 dollars.

The extra 80 dollars more than compensates for the hours lost. It takes only a few hours by air while the train journey takes 57 hours, including tiresome hour-long formalities during custom checks and train changes in Dang Dong.

For the moment, the Hanoi-Beijing trains usually have three coaches and at most carry about 25 passengers. Vietnamese rail authorities however say these are early days yet and are hopeful that business will pick up.

“In September we are going to discuss with our Chinese colleagues the ways to increase profitability of the scheme,” Nguyen Quang Huy, of Vietnam Railway Authority told IPS.

Business on another rail link between two nations — the Kunming- Lao Cai track — also inaugurated in February — is starting to pick up, according to the Vietnamese ministry of transport which expects about 15,000 tonnes of Chinese goods to be delivered via this route in August.

The history of this particular railway is shadowed by the appalling death of more than 20,000 Chinese and Vietnamese workers used as slave labour to build the 300 km track completed early this century.

The history of rail-link construction within Vietnamese actually started in 1898 under French colonial rule. The 2,600 km track took around three decades to be completed and today forms the backbone of the country’s main railway network.

War and low financial returns have traditionally dogged the transport system.

At the end of World War II the railroad was subjected to repeated sabotage by the Vietminh troops fighting against the French and later the Americans, forcing the abandonment of large sections of the track in the southern Vietnam.

In the north the railroad was similarly a constant target for American warplanes trying to block supplies from China.

Once the Vietnam War ended in 1975, the rebuilding process began and priority was given to re-establishing the Hanoi-Beijing route as a symbol of the Communist victory. Then came Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia.

On the financial side, a lack of investment has made the rail travel an unreliable form of transport. Trains are also subject to looting on rural routes so that many poor Vietnamese are loathe to risk losing their meagre earnings on a rail journey.

Indeed, for the first time in more than 60 years, rail authorities are predicting a small profit in 1996.

Foreign investment is for the moment scarce. Most of the hundreds of million of dollars in multilateral aid or bilateral funds are given for other infrastructure projects deemed more pressing like roads, harbours, airports and telecommunications.

So the system continues to run on a motley collection of aged locomotives with their obsolete freight and passengers wagons.

The government is meanwhile focused on developing inter- regional links with the hope of boosting trade with China and fast growing South-east Asia. Just last May, Vietnam joined the Association of South-east Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) Railway Union in what represented another step toward a Trans Asia Railway.

The Asian Development Bank (AsDB) estimates that for a trans- Asian railway to become a reality — the South-east Asia-Indochina link would require an investment of more than seven billion dollars over the next 20 years.

While shortage of private investment funds and various logistical problems are likely to delay much of the project for quite some years, neighbouring countries are taking the initiative in the hope of boosting bilateral trade.

And being strategically located between rapidly growing China, and the developed economies of Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, Indochina is seen in the short-term as the most commercially viable option for investment in railway infrastructure.

Construction work is already on for linking Thailand’s north eastern border town of Nong Khai to the Laotian capital Vientiane just 26 kms away. There are also plans to link this network further to other Mekong River basin areas like the southern Chinese province of Yunnan and neighbouring Cambodia and Vietnam.

“The return of peace to Asia has made it possible for countries to think of the railway project once again,” says M. Rahmatullah, head of the Bangkok-based Transport, Communication and Tourism Division of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

Studies carried out by experts from ESCAP divide the trans- Asian railway project into three main sub-regions: a northern corridor linking the Korean peninsula with China, Mongolia, Kazakstan and the Russian Federation; a southern corridor linking Bangladesh, India, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka; and the other covering Indochina and ASEAN.