BANGKOK, Thailand -- Bangkok hopes Beijing will help build a $2.8 billion, east-west highway and railway "Land Bridge" across Thailand, linking the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Thailand as a short-cut for oil and other international cargo currently sailing further south via Singapore and the Malacca Strait.
Inland southern China could then also use existing north-south roads and rails to enable Chinese overland access, for the first time, to southern Thailand's two planned deep-sea ports on the Andaman and Gulf coasts, opening westward to the Indian Ocean and east to the Pacific.
Thailand describes the Land Bridge plan as a faster, shorter, cheaper route for international shipping compared to the narrow, congested, southern Strait of Malacca wedged between Singapore and Indonesia.
The Land Bridge could also become an alternative route if hostilities erupt in the region and the Malacca Strait is blockaded.
Many of the international ships passing Singapore carry Middle Eastern oil and other products to China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and elsewhere in the Pacific.
