The Belt Road Initiatives and Regional Integration in South East Asia

The East Coast Railway Link (ECRL) in Malaysia is a major (even 'flagship') project of China's Belt Road Initiatives (BRI), connecting the more developed west coast of Malaysia to its less developed east coast. Notoriously, the project was one of many that were paused in 2018 (e.g. the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore High Speed Railway) following a historical election in Malaysia that led to the first major change in government since its founding as an independent country. But it is also the only one that was subsequently restarted. This thesis deploys a cultural political economy (CPE) lens – combining discourse analysis with a critical political economic exploration – to explore Sino-south east Asian regional integration through examination of this case study. Through interviews with diverse agents in the ECRL project, both Chinese and Malaysian, across a range of positions and responsibilities (e.g. project management, construction and finance), three major and related themes present themselves. First are the repeated, sincere but also almost formulaic expressions of undaunted confidence in the project and its broader mission, especially from more senior and/or Chinese respondents. Secondly, the interviews foreground and illustrate the specific power/knowledge technologies of slogans and their efficacy in driving forward the project. Thirdly, there is the emerging shared common-sense of historical comparisons between the BRI and former, Western projects of infrastructure (e.g. Marshall plan or imperial colonialism). The thesis unfolds these issues towards insights regarding the BRI as a project of regional integration, its evolution as a broader geo-strategic initiative, and the ongoing transformation of globalized capitalism of which it is a key part.