| With China's economy booming, Thailand has revived a $23 billion project to excavate a 75-mile canal through its Kra peninsula, linking the Indian Ocean with the Gulf of Thailand. On paper the project looks good -- the canal could save millions of dollars in freighting oil to China and manufactured goods back to the rest of the world. A Thai canal would also allow vessels to avoid the pirate-plagued Straits of Malacca. Next month the Thai Senate is due to vote on a recently completed four-year canal "pre-feasibility" study. Security concerns may finally tip the balance in favor of the project; the Malacca Strait carries the brunt of the traffic to and from China, but a pirate or terrorist attack sinking one large ship in the right spot could completely close the channel, used by more than 50,000 ships annually, nearly one-quarter of the world's sea-borne trade. A Thai canal could relieve the Straits' shipping pressure, by rerouting more than 200 ships per day and shave around 600 miles from the journey from Africa and the Middle East to the Pacific. Hopefully, the canal will be more environmentally friendly than previous schemes; when the idea re-emerged in the early 1980s, backers of a budget $3 billion canal proposed to excavate it using nuclear weapons. |
