High-speed rail a disaster? Thanks to Article 44 we don’t know

To put this in context, the Chinese railway in Laos has already started and tunnels are being dug right now. The Lao will get a fantastic piece of infrastructure linking much of the country to China as well as Thailand. This is crucial in a landlocked country where the road infrastructure has always been a huge problem with key sections washed away during the rainy season.
Perhaps it is time that Thailand jumped on board. 
humqdpf
It’s well under way by me (Prachuap Khiri Khan). Workers have already fenced off the old rail line with metal fencing and constructed flyovers for road traffic so the line won’t need level crossings.
Kannot
“The Chinese [are] apparently bent on cutting a deal that would put China’s engineering prowess on the world map,” writes Suthichai Yoon.
What about Thailand’s engineering prowess? It was recently reported that the Machiavellian Thai military had decided that the Chinese engineers would have to gain Thai certification before they could work on this rail project. World-class Thai engineers would set the parameters for the certification and the Chinese would be tested and approved by same Thai engineers. For a big fat fee of course. 
That demand for certification implies that it is the Thai engineers who are masters of railway engineering competency rather than the Chinese engineers. Face-saving knows no bounds.
Cadbury
Suthichai writes that, “The next Thai-Chinese meeting on the scheme will be the 20th in a series of discussions that have been plagued by tough bargaining on both sides.”
Still no final agreed cost estimate or financing arrangements with the Chinese from whom Prayut wants to borrow 100 per cent of the project cost – even while he says the nation can afford to self-finance the project.
Tough bargaining? Prayut invoked Article 44 to bypass the mandatory economic analysis to determine whether the project would be self-sustaining, or an economic white elephant sitting on Thailand’s treasury for the next 20 years. Thus far, Thai academics expect the rail system will fall short of profitability unless Thailand is able to export its soon-to-be-had new knowledge of Chinese high-speed rail technology to other countries in competition with China, France, Germany and Japan.
Srikcir
ThaiVisa