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The Kunming-Vientiane Railway: The Economic, Procurement, Labor, and Safeguards Dimensions of a Chinese Belt and Road Project

The Kunming-Vientiane (K-V) railway, part of the Kunming-Singapore multi-country rail network (or Pan-Asia Railway), is an anchor investment of the Chinese governments Belt and Road initiative (BRI). This case study will assess the rail project along four dimensions: economic implications; procurement arrangements; labor; and environmental and social safeguards. In each of these areas, evidence from the railway project suggests that Chinese policy and practice could be better aligned with the practices of other sources of multilateral and bilateral development finance. Where the projects standards are broadly aligned, at least in principle, there is nonetheless reason to believe that Chinas approach carries heightened risks given the overall scale of financing. These risks hold for Chinas global program of official finance, which has made the country the largest source of official credit in the world. In this regard, BRI policymakers should consider a more rigorous set of best practices that align Chinese official finance with leading multilateral standards, even if these practices dont currently characterize many other bilateral lenders. Such an approach would be consistent with the multilateral vision for BRI espoused by Chinese officials and reflected in the framework of the annual Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. This study considers what a stronger set of standards would look like in the context of the four areas of focus.

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Additional Info

Field Value
Document type Reports, journal articles, and research papers (including theses and dissertations)
Language of document
  • English
Topics
  • Rail
  • Transport and shipping
Geographic area (spatial range)
  • Lao People's Democratic Republic
Copyright Yes
Version / Edition 2019
License CC-BY-NC-4.0
Author (individual) Scott Morris
Publisher Center for Global Development
Publication date 2019
Pagination 27
Date uploaded June 17, 2019, 04:38 (UTC)
Date modified June 17, 2019, 04:58 (UTC)