politics

Japan puzzled by Indonesia's policy shift over high-speed rail plan

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Countriex like Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia etc. are only just now realizing how China won those contracts against Japanese competition.

Time now for them to pull out all the ZTE and Huawei gear and replace with 'safer' alternatives.

8 ( +13 / -5 )

The Japanese government should induce Indonesia to reneg on the stalled Communist China contract, by offering to build the high-speed section of track for half price.

-7 ( +7 / -14 )

Fighto,and who would cover the cost?That's a very expensive project to build at half the price.

13 ( +15 / -2 )

Interesting move which will undoubtedly cause other SE Asian nations to also reconsider their future plans with China and Japan. However, at this juncture, it appears that Indonesia is in need of a "fair" financial assistance where their people are actually "involved", "trained" and "benefit" from the projects and not the imported Chinese who will undoubtedly remain to "control" their transportation system.

15 ( +15 / -0 )

Why on earth would you let China build infrastructure in your country ? So they'll break and you buy more crappy stuffs from them ? Even Chinese don't buy Chinese-made stuffs.

15 ( +19 / -4 )

Guess that what Indonesia gets for going with the crappy competitor.

10 ( +12 / -2 )

Railway experts say it would be difficult to integrate the two projects in practical terms as the width of the tracks differs.

Two track widths will mean trains from one track will not run on the other.

140-kilometer high-speed rail service linking Jakarta and Bandung, the capital of West Java Province, commenced in 2016 by an Indonesia-China consortium

Japan in September last year reached a deal with Indonesia on the outline of a separate railway project to cover the full 720 km distance between Jakarta and Surabaya,

So the 140 km from Bandung to Jakarta will be china width and 720 km from Jakarta to Surabaya another width.

So all change in Jakarta if traveling from Bandung to/from Surabaya. No non-stop express.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

It's about building more access from Indian to Pacific Ocean, too.  Japan should help Thailand build the Kra Canal and support Indonesia.  Otherwise,  Indo-Pacific strategy is for nought.  a) Singapore is congested  b)Piracy is up   c)Thailand is poor   d)Tourism is pretty much dead and changed  e)Too many unemployed people in tropics overfishing the coral triangle and kra project could employ 30,000  f0 if US, Japan korea and India won't build it,  China will!

6 ( +6 / -0 )

But with all workers locked at home due to the COVID-19 lockdown, hows anyone going to put the project together?

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Help Thailand build the Kra Canal,  or China will build it and control it, and our Indo-Pacific strategy will be for nought... Right now , Singapore is reaching capacity, Piracy and accidents have risen on the malacca strait, Thailand is eager but too poor,  and covid has destroyed tourism and too many people in the region are unemployed, looking for work;  The amount of people overfishing live reef food fish, thus destroying sustainable populations alone is enough to get them to build the canal, a win win for Japan, Korea and India.  It could be finished in 5 years and is the oldest infrastructure project planned , since 1664.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Maybe Spain should get in on the action

https://youtu.be/ZiH4kt14yGw.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

It's not just Indonesia. The UK is getting cold feet with its 5G network deal involving Huawei. Hope this trend continues.

Japan and other democracies had better really take advantage of this and get more deals with its neighbours.

7 ( +10 / -3 )

Maybe Spain should get in on the action

EU nations do not have the technical expertise of Japan to design and build world leading high-speed rail. Indonesia will choose Japan.

-2 ( +4 / -6 )

..referring to Jakarta's new proposal to integrate the China-led project with a medium-speed railway plan involving Japanese assistance..

..and bringing in a consortium of Japanese investors to join the Indonesia-China project..

Well, how else are the china-nese going to steal Japanese technology & tech know-how? By pretending to collaberate and then slowly steal all the Japanese info, of course!

There is ample evidence and outcry from Indonesian villagers and townsfolk about their land being cleared for the railway but then nothing has been done for years. All those trees cut down and forests decimated....but neither the china-nese nor the Indonesians doing anything after that.

Had this been a Japanese ONLY project, the railway would have been finished ages ago.

-2 ( +4 / -6 )

EU nations do not have the technical expertise of Japan to design and build world leading high-speed rail.

When did France and Germany leave the EU?

4 ( +5 / -1 )

Had this been a Japanese ONLY project, the railway would have been finished ages ago.

Yes just like the totally out of control Fukushima Daiichi NPP after 9 years and...?

-1 ( +5 / -6 )

just like the totally out of control Fukushima Daiichi NPP after 9 years and..

Please explain how you can control earthquakes & tsunamis. Especially an unprecedented tsunami.

1 ( +6 / -5 )

Fighto - "EU nations do not have the technical expertise of Japan to design and build world leading high-speed rail. Indonesia will choose Japan"

True but that's primarily because we value our countryside and don't want to concrete over everything like Japan has.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

Indonesia wants high quality product at a cheap price or for free. Make decision without consultation is another south east Asia Govt form of management( excluding Singapore) . They think by giving the project they are doing Japan a favour and therefore make decision without consultation.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Seems like every country in the world has high-speed rail, except the US, where Big Oil is allowed to buy politicians.

3 ( +5 / -2 )

@Wesley

There was nothing unprecedented about the tsunami.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

Please explain how you can control earthquakes & tsunamis. Especially an unprecedented tsunami.

Well maybe TEPCO not building on a major fault line with a frequent history of major tsunamis, right by the sea, just to save money???

indonesia has earthquakes, tsunamis and active volcanos too. Don’t know now to say “corruption” in Indonesian, but 720km and land expropriation may be a windfall.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

Japan has to abandon trouble making role in East Asia. Join China to make great east Asia co-prosperity sphere for all east Asians.

-3 ( +1 / -4 )

ken#

Japan and other democracies had better really take advantage of this and get more deals with its neighbours.

This will probably be the big challenge ahead. The CCP Juggernaut are master opportunists and little else. Just ask previous customers like Sri Lanka how happy they are with their investment ‘partners’. Japan, who may hold the knowledge and goods to actually get the job done, will have to pick up its communication game big time. Constant follow ups and requests for feedback will be key, something that doesn’t come naturally to the usual J Business model. It’s either that or we are going to have to listen to the usual low resolution carry on like that of the statement above. Partnerships with gangsters under the banner of East Asian Unity. Thanks but no thanks. This could be Japans moment, I really hope they can take it.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Japan has to abandon trouble making role in East Asia. Join China to make great east Asia co-prosperity sphere for all east Asians.

Not many Japanese right-wingers and nationalists accept this truth. LDP cronies and Shinzo Abe had sold Japan for the Chinese and Europeans-Americans. FOR YEARS! Chinese simply dominate the Japanese real estate sector, while Europeans and Americans are rapidly acquiring distressed Japanese assets for cheap.

This is the very reason why Mike Pompeo barely mentions Japan as an active contender in the American-led coalition against China. The US currently evaluates India, Vietnam and Russia even more. Freaking South Korea is also included!

Japan has too many vested interests and investments that have been sold out and dominated by the CCP. Japan allows the SoftBank's ARM being dominated by the CCP through selling of the majority stake in Chinese JV for the CCP's SOE firms (owned by Chinese military).

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Railway experts say it would be difficult to integrate the two projects in practical terms as the width of the tracks differs.

Crazy. This is what happens when countries/governments, as opposed to companies, are contracted to build rail systems. They force proprietary systems on clients for political reasons. Indonesia and others should be contracting from private firms thru open tenders, insist on common global standards, and choose the winner based on technical expertise, not political clout.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Crazy. This is what happens when countries/governments, as opposed to companies, are contracted to build rail systems. They force proprietary systems on clients for political reasons. Indonesia and others should be contracting from private firms thru open tenders, insist on common global standards, and choose the winner based on technical expertise, not political clout.

If Indonesia had the money, yeah.

Indonesia selected CCP mainly on the financial scheme they had proposed with the construction plan.

Hell, Japan developed the original overall construction plan based on Indonesia government request thinking that Japan will obtain the contract only to have the rug pulled under their feet by the newly elected president and the plan given to CCP on a silver plater.

Later on CCP was back pedaling on their words and Indonesia found themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place and asking Japan to bail them out.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

If Indonesia had the money, yeah.

A competitively tendered system built on common standards would pay for itself in the long run.

A criticism of Japan's pitch to sell high speed rail to the US was the fear it may be based on JR East's unique and opaque technical standards. That would mean (figuratively speaking) that every time the system needed a screw as a replacement part, the operators would have to phone Tokyo and pay a monopoly price. The costs for maintenance, services and upgrades would snowball time with a monopoly operator.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Japan has to abandon trouble making role in East Asia. Join China to make great east Asia co-prosperity sphere for all east Asians

I don't think anyone wants to join china. They don't want their mothers, sisters, wives to be forced sterilized.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

GoodlucktoyouJune 29 12:12 pm JST

>    Please explain how you can control earthquakes & tsunamis. Especially an unprecedented tsunami.

> Well maybe TEPCO not building on a major fault line with a frequent history of major tsunamis, right by the sea, just to save money???

That's like telling the people of San Fransisco and most of California to move away because their homes are built on well known earthquake fault lines. Have you seen the movie San Andreas? 

Granted TEPCO could have done more. But that doesn't detract from the fact that most countries would rather trust German, Japanese or French engineering than china-nese ones. Especially when it comes to infrastructure that deals with human lives. There is a famous incident in china where a HS train crashed and instead of investigating, the authorities BURIED entire train compartments....as if to hide the fact a whole train had derailed. Search for the pics online.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I wish the High Speed Rail Authority in California would fire the current crooked contractor and bring the Japanese in to build California's high speed rail system the right way, on time and on budget. Since their first Bullet train ran in 1964 Japan has never suffered a fatality on their system, even during major earthquakes. They are the masters of high speed rail.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

"That's like telling the people of San Fransisco and most of California to move away because their homes are built on well known earthquake fault lines. Have you seen the movie San Andreas?"

That movie was complete nonsense. Hoover Dam would not collapse from a M7.1 earthquake (we had one with an epicenter just ten miles from where I live so I have some first hand experience with that kind of quake) and the entire length of the San Andreas would not break at once. It's a ridiculous premise. The real, and more interesting story, is that the northern half of the San Andreas is gradually shifting it's strain to a new series of faults extending from where the San Andreas Fault exits Cajon Pass north through the Eastern California Shear Zone up to the Owens Valley and what is called the Walker Lane extending through Reno and into Oregon. That M7.1 quake, and the M6.4 quake we experienced the day before, are part of the process. The earlier Hector Mine and Landers Quakes were also part of that process. Line them up on a map and see. The boundary between the North American and Pacific plates is gradually shifting to the faults just east of the Sierra Nevada, and the Gulf of California is gradually extending north into the Mojave Desert. None of us will live to see it by my heirs might have beachfront property!

0 ( +0 / -0 )

"Well maybe TEPCO not building on a major fault line with a frequent history of major tsunamis, right by the sea, just to save money???"

Tepco's only big mistake with that plant was not placing the auxiliary generators and their fuel on the cliff above the plant instead of on the same level of the plant where they were flooded. The reactors survived the quake. It was lack of power to run the cooling system that doomed it.

People have what I see as an irrational fear of anything nuclear. It's like anything else in engineering. Study it, understand what different design choices do in terms of reliability, safety and power output, and make rational design choices that minimize risk to the public. More people die from dams failing than have ever died from nuclear accidents but we don't stop building dams or demand they all be torn down.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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