March 31, 2008
Vientiane - The Greater Mekong Subregion -- a grouping that includes China, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar -- is set to be transformed by a vast new network of "economic corridors."
Many of the key highway links under the regional transport scheme, are designed and promoted by the Asian Development Bank, according to AFP. They all are nearly finished. Details are as follows:
-- An "east-west corridor" is almost complete between Myanmar's Mawlamyine port on the Bay of Bengal and Vietnam's Danang port on the South China Sea, reducing a 4,000-kilometre sea voyage to a 1,600-kilometre road trip.
-- A 1,800-kilometre north-south link from China's Kunming will cut across Laos to Bangkok, reducing the three-day land journey to 20 hours. China this month completed its 688-kilometre section to the Lao border.
-- A road and rail corridor will also connect Kunming with Vietnam's capital Hanoi by 2011, linking two nations that were at war as recently as 1979, and another new highway will run on to the deep-sea port of Haiphong.
-- The Thai capital and port of Bangkok is also being connected with modern highways via Cambodia, a country still scarred from decades of civil war, with Vietnam's largest harbour, the southern hub of Ho Chi Minh City.
