BUKU: ‘Fast Tracking Politics’: How Southeast Asian Leaders Capitalized China Railway Projects for Legitimacy

This book will provide the causal explanation of the puzzling variation inresponses made by Laos, Malaysia, and Thailand in dealing with rail projects involving China. Despite facing similar structural pressure and comparable domestic conditions, the three countries displayed different pattern of responses in term of scope of China’s involvement, scale of project, and speed of dealing process with China. The responses are also counter-intuitive; where economic benefit is expectedly higher, the response is more cautious while in case of higher political and security concerns are involved, the response is more eager. The main question being investigated in this study is what are the factors that drive the different degrees of responses from Laos, Malaysia, and Thailand towards China in the domain of rail infrastructure?