The road ahead through the rails

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) offers us a glimpse into the realm of China’s broader geopolitical ambition.

Modelled after the historical Silk Road, the BRI presents some of the most significant globalisation schemes in today’s economy and is one of China’s ways of bolstering its global position as an independent and robust force from the west.

This initiative follows a series of long-term economic investments and developmental infrastructure projects of ports and railroad transportation systems across the landlocked countries of Central Asia and throughout maritime routes in the Indo-Pacific sea region.

In his 2017 keynote speech at China’s Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, President Xi Jinping stated: “Peaceful development has always been a shared goal of mankind”.

Under his vision of accelerating cultural and trade exchanges, China took on a much broader stance for shared prosperity and inspired a multitude of countries, including Malaysia, to join efforts and participate in this promising new era of diplomatic co-existence and regional development.

However, it is unfortunate that many China-funded projects have been clouded by scepticism, controversies and politically-fuelled narratives.

The resurgence of Chinese-Malaysia bilateral relations did for a time spark domestic fears of “corrosive capital” that could plunge the country into financial debt.

A case to note for such a perception was the operations and ventures of the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) or Laluan Rel Pantai Timur megaproject in Malaysia.

Although its enterprising aim was connecting the more developed southern part of Peninsular Malaysia to the western harbour of Port Klang and the Straits of Malacca, when the opposition coalition party Pakatan Harapan (PH) came into power in 2018, the infrastructure project suffered multiple rejections to its contract as well as criticism to its cost, modalities and overall railway design, as it had been under the mandate of Najib’s alleged corrupted Barisan National (BN) government.

There were also instigations that PH employed the “China threat” rhetoric to criticise the former government for the nature of its engagement with China and as a strategy of political legitimation.

This, coupled with the ever-changing policies amongst stakeholders, has caused the project to face perceptual backlash amongst the urban and well-educated public.

Nonetheless, increasing pressure from Beijing and PH’s determination of upholding transparency, good governance and accountability for its wide body of electorates eventually motivated a peaceful resolution to the outcomes of the ECRL.

Today, the ECRL has been renegotiated to cost RM 44 billion from RM 65.5 billion, and possesses the length of 640 km instead of its initial 688 km rail route alignment.

With the previous considerations, however, the ECRL cannot be interpreted in isolation or undermined only by its miscarried management.

At the core of the ECRL is the potential to generate immense revenues and opportunities for development within the lands it passes through, vesseling in and exporting economic commodities of resources, labour and possibly even tourism.

Much of the bad publicity faced by the ECRL venture was caused by the rash decision-making during Najib’s era.

What must be sought after through the evolutions of the ECRL’s construction is to ensure and instil a firmer form of governance that places transparency at the foreground of all infrastructural investments, be it foreign or local.

A short trip to the Dungun Land and District Office in Terengganu, where stations of the ECRL are currently constructed, made clear that such probes into the ECRL’s management were valid.

Speaking to both the Chief Assistant District Officer of Dungun and the ​​Subdistrict Head of Paka on their viewpoints of the ECRL on local communities demonstrated that the usual public perceptions of China’s BRI were not as intolerant as expected.

Being only a small developing town reliant on the local produce of fisheries and fossil fuel minings, the locals of Dungun were said to be aware of the benefits of the ECRL, which could boost their competitiveness among other districts and states.

They showed no real protest against the railroad project except for the construction spillover of gravel and mud into their local roadways.

The officers shared their sentiments about the ECRL stations’ commercial and economic significance for Dungun, noting only their dissatisfaction and concerns of the project’s construction in terms of insufficient existing knowledge, compliance, land declaration, and communication of the project’s construction process to relevant regulatory authorities.

We can see that the BRI’s position of providing foreign arms of investment remains important for economic growth.

But as with any venture, the ideal of shared connectivity requires more than a vision; it requires a commitment to the right way of doing things.

With the ECRL scheduled for completion in December 2026, a more complete and coherent legal system must be tied to the remainder of the project duration.

The ECRL is only one account of how important it is for transparency and proper mandates to be exercised in an age of apparent corruption and collusion.

Even with our small actions of inquiry, the project has uncovered a considerable need for public disclosure that promotes more transparent and accountable administration in the country.

Jivinyaa Selvaraju is a Communications Executive under the External Relations Unit for the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS).

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of Sinar Daily.