Two Asean canals for faster regional integration

THERE are two proposed waterways cutting through the narrowest land points in Southeast Asia which can speed up the economic integration of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), predicted to be the world’s fastest progressing region in the next 20 years.

These are the Kra Canal in Southern Thailand near the ThaiMalaysian border and the Quezon Canal in the south of Luzon island in the Philippines.

Both major infrastructures will benefit Thailand and the Philippines naturally, with at least 30,000 workers employed for each canal—with the multiplier effects on their economies and the entire 10 Asean member states. This of course will also contribute towards and the world’s in the current globalization developments.

From another perspective, both will greatly contribute to the local, regional and world peace/ security because of their are expected to cause the faster rate of global consumer spending as direct results.

And precisely because of this just as the Suez and the Panama canals have contributed positively to the world economy—the Asean 10 must, individually and as a group, implement/sustain an independent foreign policy for cohesion and unity.

Loose translation: be a friend of all superpowers and industrialized/ developed nations now and an enemy of nobody. At the height of the Cold War, this was called non- alignment ideologically as the West (the popular democracies advocating “freedom” and “human rights and liberties versus the monolithic dictatorship of the communists) fought the East with proxy wars ( the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the Central Asian wars over the past 75 years).

costs estimates, the Kra Canal will need at least $30 billion while the Quezon Canal will require about $25 billion to build. Both can be completed and operational after 10 years of construction.

As early as 1677, the Thai King Nari suggested the construction of the Kra Canal and had French engineers look into it. But because that time, it was shelved. The idea was revived by the Thai royalty in 1793 but the British negotiated to scratch it and in 1897, Thailand and the United Kingdom agreed to bury it to protect Singapore (then, a British colony like Burma, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India) as the regional trade hub and shipping center.

It resurfaced in the early 1960s. It was proposed to be 400 meters wide, 102 kilometers long and 25 meters deep. It would be the alternate passage to the 1,000 km, 2.5 km wide Strait of Malacca, where some 15.1 million barrels of oil pass through daily for China, Eastern Russia ( Vladivostok), Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The daily shipping expenses for a year to operate a 265,000-deadweight ton ship will be reduced by as much as $493 million due to the reduced distance. The Maritime Institute of Malaysia 2016 report said 84,000 ships passed through the Strait of Malacca, and estimates some 140,000 ships of various deadweight tons will go through it by 2025.

The Kra Canal will connect the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand (Siam) in the east, and the Andaman Sea in the west. It will cut by 1,200 km the shipping distance, or three steaming days.

China has expressed interest in the Kra Canal and reports are that it signed with Thailand in May 15, 2015 a memorandum of understanding to build the canal in 10 - lion. Thailand, however, denied it.

- ceptualized by Alejandro Melchor Sr., during the early 1930s when the Philippines was a colony, and later, a Commonwealth of the US, as the trading hub of American of the globe.

US President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the time had in his world economic hegemony plans, the dominance of American exports to the Republic of China founded by Dr. Sun Yat-sen and his military commander Generalissimo Chiang Kai- shek. And Melchor foresaw the strategic value of the Philippines— and the Quezon Canal—as the gateway of international trade from the Americas to

World War 2 and the entry of the US into the war in December 1942, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in Honolulu and the US military bases in the Philippines, erased the Quezon Canal from the drawing board.

The Marcos regime tried to revive it with the original project study by TransAsia Architectural and Engineering Consulting headed by Antonio S. Dimalanta but the People Power |Revolution in 1986 prevented it from progressing beyond that.

President Fidel V. Ramos resuscitated it and had Dimalanta (ASD Consulting Inc.) and Jose U. Jovellanos (Engineering Development Corp. of the Philippines) form their professional team; they conducted and updated the complete project study. But the Ramos presidency ended in 1998 and the Estrada administration did not even look at it.

The 17 km long, 400 m wide and 40 m deep Quezon Canal was going to be inside the fourkilometer wide free trade Canal Zone from Atimonan town on Island on the east ending in the municipality of Unisan, and emptying into Tayabas Bay in the west.

The Canal was going to be dug amidst swamplands, most of which are public lands, to connect the Pacific with the Philippine inland waters and will have no locks— unlike the Panama and the Suez—because the tidal differences between the eastern and western ends are only a few meters.

Construction will be completed in 10 years. There will be railways on both sides of the canal; the Philippine National Railway system to the Bicol provinces will have a high rail bridge over the canal. There will be areas designated for factories of heavy, light and cottage industries with housing components; a telecommunications system of its own and renewable energy and power stations; a ship repair section, its own international airport, and a centralized section for government

Both the Kra and the Quezon Canals will be complementary to all the infrastructure programs of the individual members of the Road program, the new JapanIndia Africa- South Asian Trade Corridor, the overtures for new and strategic trade and economic relations from the European Union, Russia and the US camps.

This, therefore, is the time to invite all of them to participate and be Asean’s partners in these two canals and other major projects. Restricting alliances according to ideologies is out and national and regional development in line with global cooperative interactions—also known as friendly competitions—is in. We must ride on it now or totally miss the train!